A little more about me and a little plugging of a great book!

Now, I know I really should be working on Chapter 9 of Changes (so I don’t fall behind and loose my buffer), but I’m in sort of a mood today and writing isn’t coming very easy!

So … maybe later …

I should also finish up my review on Elizabeth Hunter’s (EtheHunter, who wrote The River, to us fan fic junkies) A Fall of Water, but I’m very uninspired to do so … not that the book wasn’t great … because it totally was …

In fact, while I have y’all’s attention … let me plug that …

A Fall of Water is an original self-published book by Ms. Hunter and it’s great.  It’s actually the fourth and final book in her original series — The Elemental Mysteries.

If you’d like to know more about it, here’s a link to it … http://www.goodreads.com/series/79846-elemental-mysteries

These books follow Giovanni Vecchio (a leading man who rivals only Eric Northman … and maybe Barrons, in my opinion) and Beatrice de Novo over a period of about ten – twelve years while they search for Gio’s family’s missing and priceless library.

Gio is a supe, but because of the way the first book is written, I really don’t want to give away much more than that.  There’s a bit of a mystery until well into the first book as to what exactly he is and I don’t want to ruin that for anyone.

These books have become one of my favorite series’ over the past few months as I’ve read and devoured each one and they are totally affordable.  On my Nook, the most expensive one was $3.99 and honestly, I’d have paid way more for it.

They are that good!

As I said, A Fall of Water was the last book in the series; however, Ms. Hunter has promised more the world she’s created, so we have that to look forward to!

Now, I’ll move on to what I’d originally decided to post about … Exercise!

I am the laziest person known to man.

Really, I am.

I’m 35 and since I began driving, for the most part, I have led a life of a total couch potato … which is a shame because I used to be sooooooo active.

When I was in Jr. High and High School I walked everywhere and it didn’t matter how far away it was.  I was also in Marching Band, and then went on to become a member of Auxiliary corp (twirling batons and flags, for those that may not know what that is) and I also played tennis.

I was skinny then.

Well, now, not so much ….

I’m not obese.  I’m a size 12/14 … 10 on a good day and I’m only about four pounds overweight, although I’d like to drop about 20 or 30.  That would put me right around the median of what I should be based upon my height.  Really, if I’d just tone up, I’d be good to go, though.

All that said and explained; I recently got a great deal on a gym membership and would you believe, I’m now super-duper addicted to the gym.

I crave it!

As a matter of fact, I haven’t been since Saturday and I feel like a loser!

But I’m making up for all that tonight!

Now, don’t get me wrong …

I hate going to the gym.  I don’t look forward to it and I hurt all the time, but it’s a good hurt — if there’s such a thing — and once I’m there and I get going there’s just really something super-satisfying about the way I feel.  I love the way I feel when I feel I can’t do it anymore, yet I push myself and make it a bit further.

It’s truly the best feeling in the world!

This all started on Memorial Day.  Since then, I’ve gone to the gym five days a week for at least an hour, but preferably two and would you believe I’m already seeing results.

I’ve actually gained weight, but my clothes are looser, my muscles are more tone (OMG! I have hard abs — granted they are still covered by a layer of smooshy, fat, but they are there and if I engage them and stretch, I can see them!), and my love handles are disappearing before my eyes!  I also have more stamina (Thank you, Treadmill!  I love you).

It truly is amazing how quickly changes have come.

So, why am I telling y’all this?

Well … for a few reasons …

1. Because I’m so proud of myself I want to share it with everyone.  There’s just something about the way I felt the first time I ran for 10 minutes straight on the treadmill.  I could not have done that two weeks ago, yet after four days of exercise, I was able to.

2. Because I’m sure there’s some of you out there who can totally relate.  If there’s one trend I’ve noticed about my computer junkie friends is that we’re all lazy and out of shape.  Maybe I’m wrong, but I’m lumping fan fiction readers in with the computer junkies because I’ve found a lot of us are one the computer a lot.  Also, writers often spend hours upon hours sitting in front of the computer.  All of this means we aren’t out, being active and our metabolisms are completely shot!

And …

3. Because I want y’all to know if I can do it, y’all can too.   Like I already said, two weeks ago, I could have never ran for ten minutes straight, but now I can!  Did I mention, I’m a smoker too … it’s sorta relevant to my out-of-shapeness.  Anyhoo, When I first started, I worked out with my BFF and I honestly thought I’d never make it through the workout, but I did and it’s getting easier every single time I go and every single time, I surprise myself with what I’m able to do.  I’ve learned it doesn’t matter how big or small you are, or how strong or weak you are … I swear, you can get fit if you just put in a little effort.

So, if any of you are trying to get a little healthier, or want to, feel free to drop me a line.  It’s always easier to do these sorts of things when you have support and I’m definitely here for any of you who may need it!

Now, I’m sure I’ve completely bored you all to death, so I’ll stop!  I have reviews to write, chapters to write, contest entries to read … and did I mention I’m actually at work, so I guess I should be doing my job! LOL!

Till next Monday …

😉 Kelly

Published in: on June 13, 2012 at 12:38  Comments (2)  

Hobbies

So, I obviously am a very busy person … hence the lack of updates … so, I thought I’d tell y’all a little about other stuff I do besides writing.

Today, I’ll tell y’all a bit about my latest hobby …

Fish!

A couple of years ago my husband and I, on a whim, bought a 1.5 gallon fish tank and several fish …

We named them all after characters from the Sookie Stackhouse Series.

We had Eric (an orange glofish and very much an alpha in the tank), Sookie (an albino cory catfish), Bubba (an algae eater), Bill (a red glofish), and Sam (a green glofish) … although he turned out to be Pam in the end once we’d figured out how to sex them.

Being new to keeping fish, they all eventually died.

All except Eric.

Eric lived for a few years and became a part of our family, but more importantly was the start of a whole new hobby for me and my husband.

Since the first tank, we’ve upgraded twice.  First to a 5 gallon tank; especially made for glofish, with a blue led light which makes them glow, and then to our current tank — a 30 gallon freshwater community tank.

It was really a learning experience going from a small tank to a large one.  If any of you have fish, you know and if you don’t have fish and ever get them, educate yourself first.  You will lose fish if you don’t and you’ll probably lose fish even if you do.

We lost five fish of our seven fish and the two that did survive almost didn’t.

The two fish that survived are now completely healthy and they have all kinds of new friends.

Now, we have 5 Tiger Barbs — two of which are albino — 4 glofish (blue, purple, green, and orange), and 4 glowlight tetras.  We plan on adding a red glofish, another glowlight tetra, and possibly an albino rainbow shark soon.

They are happy fish and they love to school together and play and whenever we walk over to the tank they all think it’s time to eat.

I absolutely love them just as much as my dog and cats!

So, that’s enough about my hobby, but I will also leave y’all with a few pictures of my other babies …

Aren’t they adorable!

😉 Kelly

Published in: on March 3, 2012 at 18:53  Comments (2)  

Quick Update, The Story of My Wedding, and a Fic Recommendation All Rolled into One

Hello everybody!

I’ve been a little better with utilizing my blog and getting it all up to date as of lately, so I’ve decided to take it a step further.

See, there’s a writer out there — seastarr08 — most of you are probably familiar with her and if you aren’t you totally should be.  She’s a great writer and author of several of my favorite fics.

Anyway, she utilizes her blog in a way I have really come to enjoy, so with that said, I’m gonna try to be a little more like her.  She’ll post little blurbs about her thoughts on various items, as well as her writing, so we really get a little insight into her as a person and I think that’s very cool.

So, this is the first of my more personal posts and it just so happens I was inspired by one of her stories, or more specifically, my review of one of her story’s chapters, to tell this particular story about myself.  It also is sort of fitting given our current place in Forbidden Pleasures.

Now, before I get into my story, I must digress …

I’ve told you if you don’t know of seastarr08 you must read her stories, and although I love them all, I’m gonna take a minute to pimp the story I alluded to above — Undeclared.

Undeclared follows A/H Sookie and Eric throughout a 10 year, turbulent relationship.

They met in college and things quickly developed between them.  Things were perfect for a while, but when you’re that young, things don’t stay easy forever and you eventually have to grow up.

That’s all I want to say about the plot because part of the beauty of seastarr’s writing is that she keeps you guessing the whole way through and I wouldn’t want to ruin anything for anyone.

This story is pretty much complete.  We’re currently waiting for the epilogue, but that’s it and I’m guessing it’ll be up sometime today or tomorrow.  Unlike me, she’s an almost daily updater! 😉

Now, back to my story …

The story of my wedding and my decision to get married …

I met my husband back in 1998.  It was during summer school.  I smoke (and I don’t want your lectures — I know it’s bad) , so between my classes I’d gone outside to have a cigarette.  I was sitting in the breezeway between the admin building (where my classes were) and the library chatting with a guy from my class.  He’d asked me what my plans were once the term was over and I was telling him when a guy happened to walk out and overhear our conversation.

I’d just been telling the guy my friends and I were planning a trip to Maryland beginning on the last day of class.  We’d gotten tickets to see Phish and were going to go camping in conjunction with the show at Merriweather Post Pavillion.

I had to explain to him who Phish was, which wasn’t very surprising because some reason.

See, back then, only their fans had heard of them, at least in southern WV that was the case.  I find more people have heard of them today, but you still have to explain sometimes, but that has nothing to do with my point …

So … back to the story …

A guy walked outside, and overheard us …

He interjected, “Did you say you were seeing Phish?  Because I’m seeing them in a couple weeks too, in Raleigh.”

We were both amazed to have met another person who knew who Phish was!  LOL!  They really were that obscure when I was in college.

Now, to move this along and make a really long story short, we’ll flash forward a bit …

He and I have been together pretty much since that day.  The very next day, I gave him my number and we started hanging out as friends and once he started sleeping it over at my apartment, it developed into more.

The one constant we’ve had throughout our relationship has been our love of music and our love of the band Phish.  We’ve seen them soooooooo many times together I couldn’t even tell you a number.

We’ve traveled all over to see them and in more recent years, no matter how broke we’ve been, or whatever craziness is happening in our lives, we’ve always tried to see them at least once a year.

I think this is a good place to move on to the getting married part of the story …

He and I were never gonna get married.  We’re the type of people who believed that, essentially, marriage is in your heart and you don’t really need a piece of paper to be committed.

That all changed in 2002.

Phish had gone on hiatus, but in 2002 they announced they were coming back, after 2 years.  They announced a Winter Tour beginning on 12-31-02 at Madison Square Garden.  The New Year’s Eve show would then be followed by a 3-night run in Hampton, Va on 1-2, 3, & 4-03, and if there’s anything any fan of Phish reading this, you know they always put on a great show in Hampton.

We knew there was no way we were getting tickets to MSG, so we set our sites on Hampton, as did everyone else we knew.  They were offering the first round of tickets via lottery, so we submitted for 2 tickets for all three nights.

The way it worked was that you could submit for all three nights, but you could end up with no tickets at all, or tickets to one night, etc.  So, basically there was a chance we’d get nothing or that we could get 1 ticket to each night or 1 ticket to one night.  It was enough to make us very nervous and exited because we really wanted to see Phish and we didn’t want to take our chances with Ticket Master.

The notification finally came.  We’d scored all our tickets!  We were going to see Phish in Hampton, fresh off hiatus all three nights!

The rub …

None of our friends got any tickets through the lottery.  As it later turned out … a few managed to get tickets by other means, but none to all 3 nights.

That’s when we decided fate had intervened on us …

We’d been meant to be at those shows for a reason beyond our love of Phish.  There was a reason we’d been chosen above all our friends to get those tickets.

Yes … We’re crazy hippies!

We realized we had to get married and things just fell into place.

We ordered our rings online, drove 30 minutes over the border to Pearisburg, Va to get a marriage licence and didn’t tell a soul.

Well, I told my employer because I was a supervisor in a hotel and the new year always was a busy time.  I couldn’t risk being denied the time off.

We also told our friend Matt, who was gonna stay at our house and watch our babies — our Minipin and cat.  Since he was doing us a favor, he deserved to know what was up.

So, January 1st came and we headed to Hampton.  I got us a killer deal on a suite through the hotel I worked for and it was only about 15 minutes away from the venue.

On January 2nd, we got up.  I ran out to the store.  I wanted to buy some daisies, for my hair, and I also needed a few things for some last minute alterations to my dress.

I also bought a cake, but I’ll get to that in a minute …

Before the show, we headed into town to the office of the Marriage Commissioner.  My husband had arranged for him to marry us.

We weren’t allowed anything fancy, so in a short ceremony in his office we became husband and wife.  They did, however; after some strange looks, allow us to light a candle we’d brought.

We lit it during the ceremony and every year on our anniversary we light it for a little while as sort of a tribute.

I’m not sure what we’ll do if it every gets to its end … I don’t know if replacing it would be right, but I guess we’ll worry about that when the time comes.

After the ceremony we headed over to the lot at Hampton Coliseum, where we enjoyed one hell of a wedding reception with a whole bunch of awesome people who we didn’t know, but congratulated us and even gave us gifts, just the same.

Now, I’d mentioned a cake …

If you’ve ever been to a Phish show, you know the lot is the happening place to be.  People sell things, and in some cases give things away, hence the wedding gifts from strangers.

Well, we passed out “free wedding cake” to everyone that wanted some!  It was awesome!

So, not everyone can say Phish played at their wedding reception, but we can; and even though our friends and family weren’t there to see it, or celebrate with us, I wouldn’t change a thing because it was completely us.

Now, that about does it for my story, but I do think it’s pretty cool and worth a mention our anniversary is 123 … January 2nd, 2003.

Pretty cool, huh!

Just one more thing before I wrap this post up completely …

I’d like to mention that I’m working hard to finish up the next Forbidden Pleasures chapter, but Eric’s being a huge asshole right now and really screwing it up.  I’m trying to rein him in, so I can get the chapter out, but he’s insistent on fighting and it’s a wedding reception … totally not the place for fighting, so it’s a struggle.

But it’s coming.

Feel free to comment on this … I’d love to hear y’all’s wedding stories … or even your bitching because I don’t get chapters out in a timely manner … or seastarr’s story … I’d love to chat about it with y’all!

Till next time! 😉 Kelly

Published in: on November 14, 2011 at 14:41  Comments (4)  

I am Alive!

For those who may be following my stories or blog, I just wanted to quickly let y’all know, I’m alive and I’m trying to get a new chapter of Forbidden Pleasures complete, but I’ve had some issues …

Computer issues

Life issues

Motivation issues

Time issues

You name the issue and I swear it’s popped up in my life over the past few months …

Just so all of you know, I am currently about half-finished with the new Forbidden Pleasures chapter and I’m about halfway through a New Beginnings outtake, so keep watching for them …

Also, I realize, I’ve let this blog go a bit … I hope to find time to get everything up to date soon.

I suck … and I know it … and I’m sorry.  Hopefully, by the time I get something posted, I haven’t lost you all … I really hope!

Published in: on October 13, 2011 at 11:33  Leave a Comment  

Where have I been?

I know … I suck! I can’t say it enough!

I just wanted to touch base and let everyone know what’s up!

Currently … I’m working on 4 different chapters … I’ve got two possibilities I’ve currently started writing for Forbidden Pleasures … I know what’s supposed to happen, but I’m having a difficult time deciding exactly how it all plays out … so with that said … I’m doing what I can to figure it out.

I’m also in the outlining/planning stages for the next chapters of New Beginnings and New Beginnings Outtakes and Extras. I have nothing written yet, but I’m working on it.

The last is just an idea I’ve been playing around with … I recently read Richelle Mead’s Vampire Academy series and have thought about writing a little one-shot from Dimitri’s perspective, but I’m having a tough time with it because it’s a YA series.

I feel as a fan fiction writer, I have a responsiblity to uphold as far as the content of my stories and with VA being YA, I just don’t want to write anything too mature.  Although there are a lot of us adults that have read the series and enjoyed there are just as many 13 year olds that have read it and could potentially read what I write. That’s something I haven’t really had to worry about as much with SVM since it’s marketed as a series for adults … not that there aren’t 13 year old readers of it as well … I’d be naive to think otherwise.

With that said … if any of you have any ideas of things that aren’t too adult … that you’d like to see from Dimitri’s perspective, let me know … So far I’m thinking about a condenced retelling of Spirit Bound from his perspective.

Hopefully I’ll complete one of those during the next week or so ….

Some of you that have visited my ff.net profile may have noticed several stories missing.

Why? You might ask ….

Well, basically, I removed all my one-shots that fit into Changes and Beginnings and I removed One Year Later. I’ve done this because I’m going to reproof them, make corrections, then repost them.

The one-shots will be reposted as one story … similar to New Beginnings Outtakes and Extras.

As for One Year Later … Everyone knows I’ve not written anything for it for … well … like a really long time. That story, I’m going to correct, then start writing again. I will repost it once I’m writing it again and before I’m asked … I have no time frame for this in mind.

So, that’s my update to all of you.

I will hopefully have something new posted soon!

Kelly

Published in: on August 12, 2010 at 06:27  Leave a Comment  
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