GOBBLE GOBBLE! Happy Thanksgiving!

Sorry this post is a little late- but Happy Stuff-Your-Face-With-Tons-Of-Carbs Day! Also known as Thanksgiving. While most of us aren't pilgrims and indians sharing the crops and meat, we are still crazy relatives and friends fighting over that oh-so-succulent piece of turkey thigh. Or tofurkey depending on your taste. When you all come out of your food induced coma or manic level of sleep deprivation in the name of Black Friday shopping keep...

The Five Levels of Procrastination

Every now and then there's one dark day that pops up on your calendar. You know which one I'm talking about. The one where your inner critic jumps out from a corner and drags you into the dirt, the day where nothing you write sounds right, and all your fears and worries and insecurities come out to play. We have a name for these dark days. Writer's Block. (steven-dean) But sometimes it isn't really writer's block. Some days it's just really really...

the apple of my eye; drawing inspiration from what you see

(lackofconcentration) Inspiration, we find it everywhere these days! The back of a pick-up truck, vacation, poems, other stories, maybe even in the sour milk hiding in the back of your fridge (you might want to throw that out, by the way) inspiration hides in every nook and cranny of our lives, right down to the metaphorical fabric of life that holds everything in place. I had one of these moments today. Go figure that it's a Friday so I'm working,...

got a NaNo novel in the works? submit your line for a prize!

We're only in the second day of NaNoWriMo and already that word count should be as close to 3,334 as possible! And to think, it all starts with that first line... Speaking of first lines. You know, the one that's supposed to automatically grab the reader. Make them say, "That's weird/cool/sweet/different! Let's read more." I'm sure you've all got at least that first line down in your documents or notepads, the beginning of something fresh and beautiful. Well here's your chance to make something of it! WriMos FTW is having a contest to submit your...

ILLUMINE MAY HAVE ITS COVER!!

EDIT: The final cover of Illumine is posted right here! Sorry to interrupt our first days of insanity-promoted-by-NaNoWriMo, but I think for the most part you'll all forgive me when you see this. I'm really, really, REALLY pleased to show you what could very well be THE book cover for Illumine! It isn't official by any means, I have to double check a few things and I may want to play with the cover a little bit more, but it feels so right...

Happy Halloween everyone!

Mwahahahaha! Trick of treat! Candy, costumes and more galore! It's here! We've finally made it to that day where the veil between the physical and the supernatural worlds is lifted, and all too often through the day we feel like maybe a little magic could happen. That is, if you believe in it. ;) So what should you do on this day? Make a little magic yourself, of course! Tonight at the stroke of midnight NaNoWriMo participants all over will be...

I'm hiding over at WriMos FTW today!

That's right- I'm guest blogging again! It's kind of like a new fun-filled addiction for me, really. But anyway, I'm over at WriMos FTW today! The topic? Why and How music can really get you through that hard-to-write spot in your head (because it's all in our heads, right?)Click on the link below to read the guest post and feel free to leave a comment! Music Always Holds The K...

Halloween stories! THE MANDRAKE RUSE is up to read!

So maybe BLACK WINGS gave you a tingle on your skin. GAMES made you gasp. But I bet the newest story up there, THE MANDRAKE RUSE, will probably have the hairs standing on the back of your neck! Either way, they're all free to read on the Halloween blog! Dark clouds are coming- was that a scream? The Mandrake Ruse is up to re...

book bashing: can't we all just get along?

What do Amazon, Goodreads, Apple, and tons of blogs all have in common? If you guessed bad book reviews, you're right. When you're a constant book lover and devourer you're always in the search for new books. Some of us wander into our local indie or B&N, find our section and typically pick up one that catches our eye and has an intriguing jacket description. Others like myself, we read reviews online. Reading reviews online is typically...

frightened yet? the Halloween blog is calling you...

Have you been keeping up with the Halloween blog? A new short story was just posted, and trust me, the twist at the end will really leave a mark on your neck! Take a peek- Games awaits, if you're willing to pl...

bring on the pies and clowns! learning to laugh at yourself

"Laugh at yourself first, before anyone else can." - Elsa Maxwell It's a tough crowd out there, ladies and gents. In our tiny 24-hour window of a day we're given an insane amount of things to do- homework, chores, seeing friends and family, sports, the list just extends and extends and keeps on extending. Oh, and here's the real kicker. You have to do it all perfectly. Not a hair can be out of place, and every project presented for you to complete...

it's up and live!

I'm very pleased to present to you guys that silly thing I've been mentioning all week- the Halloween short story blog!  Are you ready to see it? Click- if you da...

cat's out of the bag! halloween short stories coming your way!

So if you've been following my Twitter the past few days, you may have noticed a few messages I've been posting. You know, the ones asking for the short and spooky stories? Well, if you've been sitting and staring at your screen wondering just what the heck I'm talking about, you'll only have to wait a few more days to get a really wicked treat mixed in with all those tricks leading up to Halloween! Staring Monday, October 17th and leading up...

spooky stuff! let the Halloween collaborations begin!

Calling all the monsters! And ghouls, ghosts, banshees, goblins, witches, wizards, demons, fae... you get my point. I'm giving my first shot at letting of spreading a little love and shedding a little light on some fellow writers! How, may you ask (preferably in an awkward false-British accent?) By hosting a little gathering of words and minds alike in the name of Halloween! If you'll see at the top of my blog, there's a neat new little tab called...

you should be reading right now! yes, now.

Sometimes as writers, we tend to get ahead of ourselves. And by ahead of ourselves, I mean we hide in a cubbyhole somewhere in the middle of a dark library and say, "I will write this. N reading, no socializing, no anything until this blog post/short story/novel/random piece is done!" This is a bad example, guys and gals. Like, number one bad example. Let's pause here and think for a moment. When was the first time you wrote something? Sure, it may have been for your English class and yes it may have been in that annoying paper that had all...

guest blog! I'm hiding out somewhere else today!

I have two great pieces of news for you guys and gals today! Well, okay, one is really cool and the other is just flat out awesome. Really cool: I'm updating the NaNoWriMo Project tab tomorrow to include a little something special- a little more surrounding the story I'll be grinding my nose into during November. Flat out awesome: I'm a guest blogger today at WriMos FTW! blog! My post over there contains brand-new details surrounding the NaNo project, so you don't want to miss giving it a read. I promise you it's not a million pages long, and...

something small: a NaNo project preview!

Yes, you read that title right! It may only be days from October, but the seasoned and slightly insane NaNo participants this year are already plotting and preparing for a writing year like no other, myself included! One of my tabs up top on the blog has been sitting there for only a few days. If you click it, you really only get to see a big envelope with the words TOP SECRET stamped across the front. I'm beyond proud and crazy excited to finally say I can sort-of tell you just what kind of project I'm working on. For weeks I've been secretly...

better than dessert: a month without ice cream for #gowithout!

Happy (belated) Fall everyone! Except for the occasional person still hiding on the Bahamas right now, we're all feeling the beginning of a winter chill in the air, the dreaded scent of pumpkin coffee and pumpkin everything EVERYWHERE, and the internal panic that Christmas will be here before we know it. But weird tasting coffee aside, my post isn't to rant about why Wawa should never make a pumpkin spiced beverage ever again, but rather a little...

hold that towel! (why you definitely shouldn't throw it in yet.)

We have tons of things in common as humans. Most of us desire to make something big of ourselves, sleep in for 'just a couple more minutes', love cake or pie, and procrastinate to the point of saying, "Why bother?" If you are anything like me and every other dreamer, our road to our dreams have a good dose of roadblocks, unfinished paving, the occasional bridge missing across a raging river, just your normal everyday stuff. But like all humans,...

rain rain, go away. come back when we start looking like texas. #writebootcamp

Ever notice how both the need to finish something and the time left to complete it shrink exponentially until, wham-bam, it's here? We've all been there, done that, staring at the nine-page essay for English the next morning we haven't even started, let alone thought of. Thankfully, I've been out of school for two years now, and even though I miss some of my teachers (Mrs. Kern! I'm still sending you a copy of my books each time I publish them) I definitely don't miss the homework that came with it. Instead, I had set out to finish the first...

dear frankenstein, we are the experiment, not you.

I have a bit of a confession: I like to experiment. Ever since I was a child, I always got a bit of a kick figuring out just what would happen if I put the straightening iron too close to my forehead, or if I tossed those rocks at my neighbor's window in hopes of killing the imaginary killer clown living inside. Realistically, I now know that putting that iron too close will give me a burn and probably make my head itch for several hours afterwards. And we all know there isn't a killer clown hiding in my neighbor's house for the most part. But...

tag, you're it! guest blog post today!

Hey guys! Ready for something awesome?! How about guest blog post over at Lyn Midnight's blog-o-awesome!? How many times will I use the question mark and exclamation point together, I don't know! Terrible grammar punctuation aside, if you haven't been stalking (or following from the shadows) my Twitter, here's the link to the post I did for my buddy and fellow friend, Lyn! Mucho thanks to her for letting me unleash a chaotic and slightly funny post on why break-ups can be wicked building blocks towards writing! You can read about it he...

hello hello, remember me?

It's been a while, hasn't it? I'm sorry, guys (and gals) for abandoning my post, but before I begin my blog-worthy rant of why I ran away, I have some... Interesting news to let you all in on. Concerning Illumine, (well, you'll hear all the details in my rant) it has been on the shelf for the past few weeks. I wouldn't exactly call it cold feet, just empty feeling. I'm not quite sure what you call it in terms of writing issues- Creeping Rot Disease, maybe? It's like, every time I pick it up, I get this feeling that since I stalled so long already,...

why we have sympathy for the bad guys: #potterchat

To continue with the #PotterChat Blog Tour, I feel like I'm about to open the weirdest, smelliest can of worms out of the bunch. After reading this, please don't chuck old bananas and Rebecca Black hard copies of Friday, please (however pastries, copies of Lucky magazine, or a free apartment in my local area I will totally take!) So from the past few days we've had an exciting series of posts. Jami touched base on how Harry Potter inspired her to write, Ava hit her too favorite Harry Potter moments, Bekah talked about Harry as a hero and how he...

something potter this way comes! #PotterChat!

I feel like I've been dying the past week. Not ebola-like dying, but just general mind-warping-into-the-carpet dying. While I'd like to blame it on my boyfriend who just moved up here, or my lack of focusing skills the past week on ANYTHING concrete and solid, it's just me and my insides and what's left of a life-long issue from a simple food poisoning event at a local eatery over a year ago. I'm plotting their demise still, don't worry. But no more sad talk! Because regardless of my declining health, I HAVE GOOD NEWS! Delayed, but still good...

harry potter; why it can be furthest from the book and STILL succeed

Ladies and gentlemen, women and children, wizards and witches alike, the final moment has arrived. Last night at 12:01 am EST, Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows Part 2 was released in the US, and I was one of the fortunate to have survived the mobs, piles of tissues, popcorn, butterbeer flavored cupcakes, Bertie Botts Beans, and enough soda to put people in diabetic comas. This is going to be as extensive of a review and thoughtful blog as I can manage on 4 hours of sleep, so Potterheads alike, please continue to read. THE FOLLOWING BELOW CONTAINS...

a big, special thank you!

No, this is not a big sloppy wet kiss. And yes, the cake here is not a lie. I felt like I had to blog after my explosion after the past few days. It all just went in this crazy, beautiful whirlwind of flying Tweets, comments, ideas and new friendships. And now I want to share all of it with YOU. Illumine went up on Wednesday, July 6th. In two days, my blog got 116 hits. Small by most standards, but considering I was releasing a single chapter,...

Sneak Peek of ILLUMINE!

Alright, guys and gals, I think I've been talking about the first bits of my soon to publish story for quite some time now (and in mystery format, no less) to safely say that, if you haven't already had the urge to strangle me, throw things at me, de-friend me on Facebook (please don't!) or more, you're probably still reading my blog and going, "Well, what are you waiting for, Alivia? Let's see this!" Excerpt from ILLUMINE The fire was growing, spreading past the bands that held him in place. Tiny rivulets raced over his face and burned into...

happy 4th of july!

Happy 4th of July everyone! Here's to hoping you're all stuffing your faces with hot dogs and hamburgers, potato salad and deviled eggs, and enough Coca Cola to pump a good sugar rush as you run around with sparklers or watch explosions of fireworks all night. Yeah, that was definitely a run-on sentence. But anyway, point is, have fun everyone! Here's a cake...

how do you not know veggietales?!

I feel like I left the blog on a bad note from the other day with my depressing post. But I hadn't quite figured out the magical formula to write a good uphill post, so mainly I've just been spending the past few days working at my actual-paying job, coaching and cheering Tim to find a new one, and editing like the worst critic on Illumine for my first piece release this Wednesday. It kind of went something like this: Work > Edit > Chug a Coke, Sweet Tea, and eat nachos > Work > Get no sleep > Sob > Edit Or something like that....

two birds, one rocket. cataclysmic destruction.

Today is not a good day. Not a sad day, or a mad day, or even a throw-my-tv-out-the-window day. Just not a good day. I tried to give today the benefit of the doubt this morning when I woke up by ignoring the various problems that were awaiting me. My earache had manifested into a double ear infection/swimmer's ear, I was days behind on editing, and bunches of little things that I normally wouldn't let bother me were creating a full scale nuclear warhead in my brain. Then I got the most heartbreaking news of all day. Tim lost his job. It's depressing...

awesome vacation + awesome friends + awesome determination = awesomesauce.

The title is just for you, Steph. <3 Hey everyone! Sorry I've been gone so long, I think I'm still suffering from a small case of brain lock from inhaling too much Hollister body spray and finding sand in places I thought I cleaned it out. Twice. But all is well, and I'm working to make everything stay on the timeline I'm dedicated to completing. Vacation was flat out AMAZING, and I think the best part (aside from getting some of the best cuddly...

that is a crazy amount of ink.

Okay so, I have a few things I realize I needed to remedy from before on one of my last blog posts, and then post more stuff that may or may not ever be read by anyone other than me, my boyfriend Tim (I know you creep my page, honey) and a few friends. Remember how I said I had multiple things go talk about after the whole WSJ article? Well, I originally did. I don't remember them now. Moving on! (In restrospect, this sounded funnier in my head than it is on here.) But honestly, I do have a thing or to I wanted to write about. First, I'm crazy...

depression hurts. writing helps.

The title sounds a little tragic, I know, but this was a spur of the moment post that just kind of snowballed into a post for the blog. I've been feeling a little... 'eh' the past two days. By eh, I mean more or less that I'd rather watch paint dry in the middle of a root canal without anesthesia than write another word for Illumine. The love-hate relationship I have with my writing is very 80-20, 80 being pure hate and frustration and the lone 20 being this obsessive love compulsion about it. But recently it's take a bigger dominance over...

so many topics, so little time.

I think my brain's been trying to explode on me for the last few hours between the few things I wanted to cover in my next post on my blog, and it's really taken about two days for me to finally straighten it out and say, "Okay, I think I got this now. Quick, write it before it changes its mind." The first thing I wanted to talk about was the whole post here from WSJ (@wsj via twitter). Being a little new to the whole Twitter network and blogging lifestyle as a whole, I turned on my iPad Sunday morning to find my newsfeed in the process of a...