Memorial Day in Pictures and Writing Update

Two weeks in a row? I'm on a roll now.

Memorial Day last weekend, after pausing to explain to the kids what it meant and why it was important, was a day of fun with friends and loved ones. And goofy pictures.  What is it about kids and camers?

But regardless of the goofy faces, it was a lot of fun with the trampoline, horshoes and football.  And food.  Good times.

And on the writing front, two notes.  First, my short story Uninvitied is being published in the anthology Silver Moon, Bloody Bullets: An Anthology of Werewolf Tales  and the publisher has arranged for an online interview with the authors of the stories in the anthology.  It's scheduled for Monday June 7th at 1pm.  I believe that's eastern time, but it doesn't designate.  Check it out:  http://www.blogtalkradio.com/page-readers/2010/06/07/page-readers-talks-with-authors-of-silver-moon-bloody-bullets


 
And secondly, a friend in my writers group asked us to show off our writing space.  So I decided to share here as well.  Not only is this my writing space, but it's also my photography space where all the post-processing magic happens.

Before we had bought the house, my space was a tiny corner of our tiny bedroom. When we did buy this place, I was thrilled that I was not going to have to use my bedroom as my office. Granted, it's not a dedicated office. It's the family room, but it gets used so little because everyone wants to watch TV or play video games on the 52" TV upstairs, so I pretty much have the family room to myself.



This is my corner of it. Large cheaply made corner desk that houses my 22" screen surrounded by my favorite books. You can't really see it, but the entire shelf top left is all Kelley Armstrong books. There's two other books shelves in the room overflowing with other authors. But I keep these handy because they're my favs.

Two printers. One is a scanner combo while the other on the far right is a tremendous epson photo printer that can do 13 inch borderless prints that look absolutely stunning. Worth the price I paid for it and necessary for my photography.

Between the epson print and my desk is the tower. Yes, I'm still PC despite my need to go MAC, but I'm fully invested in my photography software and lack the thousands that it would take to convert. Right now anyways. It's slated for the future. While the tower reads Dell, the only thing that's Dell is the shell. It's completely new, including the brand new 500 gig hard-drive that replaced the one that fried last month. Combined with the ram and processer I have, the CPU is fast and can run many programs at the same time, including my design software that usually bogs systems down. Sitting atop the tower is my brand new 1 terra external hard drive. Though I was able to recover all my data in the crash, let no one say I didn't learn anything. Everything's backed up now.

Netbook for floating around the house and yard, check. External CD drive for netbook, check. Wireless keyboard and mouse for when I feel like writing from the sofa, check. Two white boards for ideas and story lines, check. Tons of post it notes for momentary thoughts when the whiteboards are dedictated, check, check check....etc.

Software for Photos:  Adobe Lightroom, Adobe Photoshop...as well as the entire Adobe Creative Suite CS3 Master package.  It's a beautiful thing.

Software: For Writing:  Word. I have YWriter and try to use it, but I'm a creature of habit though I've been trying to break it. I use Word. For me to change, I'll have to fall in love with something else.

Oh, I'm a handwriter too. On the right of the desk, you can see stacks of note cards for my rough outlining. Right there, you are seeing my NANO piece I completed in December, and next to in my clipboard that has the remnants of my copyedits from the short story I sold. I like editing by hand. I catch a lot more that way.

For being a photographer, I know I'm light on the photos in this space, but I'm picky. The only ones hanging are the marching band pic from my senior year in high school where I was a drum major, my BSBA, my father's purple heart and a picture of my dad when he was in the marines back in the 60's. But it's my room. It works. I love it. Though we really call it the family room, its my office and where I spend large chunks of the weekend.

The way I see it, everyone needs there own space for whatever it is they do to relax.  This is mine.