Archive for the ‘Progress Report’ Category

Rose: One-Third of the Way Through

Posted: November 24, 2014 in Living and Life, Novel, Progress Report, Scary Stuff, Writing
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Well, I finally got an email from my thesis advisor M on what he thought about my new thesis outline. Here’s what he had to say:

Very full chapter outline.  You’ve sure thought it through.  At this point, it looks solid.  It’s going to be about execution, of course.  But I say go ahead with your plan and keep writing.

He also signed it M. That’s kind of funny, considering that I keep forgetting to ask him if I can call him by something other than “M” on my blog.

But back on point, the new outline reduces the story by about six chapters from twenty-seven to twenty-one, making the story much simpler and allowing me to focus on the two main characters. And since I’m now eight chapters in, I’m now officially a little over a third of the way through the story! Woo-hoo! Only thirteen more to go!

As with my previous novels, I’ve counted out how many pages and words I’ve written so far. At the moment, Rose is about sixty pages in (that’s 8.5″ x 11″ pages), with an average of seven and a half pages per chapter. And at this moment, the word count is 17,546 words, with about 2,193 per chapter. So we’re around the length of a novelette at this point. At the rate I’m going though, it’s likely to be novel length (sixty-thousand words or higher) before long.

So next up is to, like M said, execute what I’ve written in the outline on the actual page. My next step is to slowly make the story much stranger than it already is (if you’re new here, Rose is about a woman who is resurrected through magic by her stalker, and that’s just the start of her problems), while also exploring the relationship between Rose and the antagonist. Hopefully by the end of this story it’ll be a very scary, very strange story that’ll be both moving and terrifying.

Well, I hope to start on Chapter Nine before long. I’ve got some homework to do, and I’m in the middle of editing something right now, so that might slow me down a little bit, but I’m hoping that I’ll be able to catch up before the end of the month. By New Year’s I’d like to have at least gotten started on Chapter Fourteen. We’ll see what I do.

Wish me luck, my Followers of Fear. I’ve got a busy schedule these days, so I need all the luck I can get! I’m sure a lot of you can relate.

Updates on My Various Projects

Posted: November 23, 2014 in Living and Life, Novel, Progress Report, Writing
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It’s been a while since I posted on my books that are in the process of getting written/edited/published/whatever, so I thought I’d write up a quick post to just let you all know about how those projects are going and when we can expect them to be in print. Spoiler: not any time soon.

Video Rage

The long-awaited sequel to Reborn City (especially by my sister and my stepmother). Last I was working on it, I’d made considerable progress on the book and had made it about halfway or so through the manuscript. Of course, senior year started, and I had to switch gears to work on Rose (more on that below). So I’m not sure when I’ll be able to get back to that, but it’ll probably be when I don’t have classes, a thesis, and a job search to deal with all at once. So hopefully at some point next year. Yes, I know, it’s sad and frustrating. But when you’re working with my busy schedule, what can you do?

Actually, there is plenty you can do: offer me a job that matches my qualifications if you got one. Either that, or come by and do my homework for me. I’ve got an 8-10 page Shakespeare paper due December 9th. Any volunteers? No? Good, that’s cheating and I could get expelled for that.

Laura Horn

I’ve been thinking a lot about this novel lately. For those of you who haven’t seen me post about it before (it’s been a while), Laura Horn is a thriller about a teenage sexual assault victim who comes across information that threatens the United States and finds herself the only one who can stop it. At the same time, she must confront her demons and the man who assaulted her. The thing is, after I finished the first draft, I realized that certain parts of the story required too much suspension of disbelief. There was so much going on, some of it involved a stretch of the imagination to actually imagine happening, and at times I felt like there were glaring errors in the plot that I was missing. And then I found some of them!

All in all, the whole thing is unwieldy. But, I love the characters, especially my protagonist. I love the journey she goes on, and how it makes her go from a scared little girl to…well, she’s stronger. In a better place. And I liked the idea of the story very much.

So I think when the opportunity presents itself, I may try rewriting the story (because apparently a second draft for me is rewriting the whole damn thing, at least lately anyway). I’ve already got an idea for a new storyline that makes a lot more sense, it’ll be a bit shorter than the original version, and I think I’ll still get the story I want without facing those problems of believable storytelling. I just need the time to write it (what else is new?). So don’t expect LH to come out any time soon. I know, I know. It looks like nothing will be coming out soon, and that’s a fair opinion. But you never know. Something may change.

Rose

Last I updated you guys on my novel-that-doubles-as-my-thesis, I had to rewrite the outline again because the direction would’ve made the whole story a little crazy. So I sent the new outline to my advisor, and I was supposed to meet with him Friday. Sadly, the meeting got cancelled, so I’ll be emailing him this coming week to see if he would just send me his thoughts in an email. It might make it a bit easier since carving out a time for three busy people to meet up for even half an hour or more and just talk. If I hear anything, you guys will be among the first to know.

Self-Published Authors Helping Other Authors

Hope to get a new article out some time soon. That’s all I’m saying on this.

Well, that’s all for now. I’ve got a bit of editing to do tonight, so I’m going to get on that. Wish me luck, my Followers of Fear. These days, I need all the luck I can get my hands on.

 

Snake: Review #4

Posted: November 4, 2014 in Novel, Progress Report, Review, Writing
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Snake

How far would you go for love and revenge?

Just a little over a week since the last review came up, a new one has been posted on Amazon. I guess it was only a matter of time before Snake started to catch up with Reborn City and The Quiet Game.

Snake is about a young man who becomes a serial killer in order to save the woman he loves. It’s definitely one of my darker works, and considering I’m a horror author that’s saying something. Anyway, this is the fourth review of Snake, and it was posted by Michele Kurland, who gave the book 4-stars (Michele also gave Reborn City and The Quiet Game pretty nice reviews as well. I guess I’ve got a fan). Her review is entitled This page-turning read was another great effort by Rami. Here’s what she had to say:

Well, I took yet another vacation where I made my family “just wait until I finish this chapter.” This page-turning read was another great effort by Rami. He is not afraid to take risks in plot twists and turns, character development and he takes the reader on quite the journey in this book. So looking forward to his next creation!

Well Michele, I have several new creations, I just have to find the time to get them edited and published! And I like it when I make it difficult to put the book down. It shows that I’m doing my job as a fiction writer.

If you would like to read Snake, you can find it in both paperback and e-book from Amazon and Smashwords. And if you do decide to read it, please let me know what you think. Positive or negative, I love feedback, and you can leave it for me in a comment or you can leave a review online for me to find.

And as I keep reminding everyone, Reborn City is having a big sale and giveaway. You can find out details here if you wish to learn more.

That’s all for now. I’ve got some work to do, so I’ll get to it. Have a good evening, my Followers of Fear.

Rose: The Present-Tense First-Person Shift

Posted: October 19, 2014 in ideas, Living and Life, Novel, Progress Report, Reflections, Scary Stuff, Writing
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It’s been a while since I updated everyone on my novel-that-also-doubles-as-my senior-thesis Rose, but I have the opportunity to do so now. Especially since I can’t do my job search without updating my resume, and I’m waiting to hear back from a couple of people on whether I can use them as references.

Well, if you’ll remember my post on my first thesis meeting, you know I ended up switching to first person and rewriting some of the early chapters to make them darker. Well, this past Wednesday there was another meeting with my advisor and the other student I’m working with (I keep meaning to ask if I can use their real names, but I keep forgetting. Oh well, I think I’ll stick to M, my advisor, and P, the other student I’m working with). They had a lot of suggestions for me:

  • Probably a hold over from writing Reborn City and Video Rage, but I have a tendency to explain the stranger elements of the story. Works great for science fiction, but terrible for horror. So I’m trying not to explain the stranger aspects and let the story tell it through what happens.
  • There are a few comedy elements that I’m trying to cut out. We’ll see how that goes.
  • There are some things I will need to change for the first couple chapters, but that’ll wait for the second draft.
  • Most importantly, I’ve switched to narrating in present tense.

That last one is a big one for me. In a previous post, I mentioned that I probably shouldn’t narrate in present tense because I’m not very good or familiar with it and because I have the tendency to switch back into past tense. I explained that to M, but he insisted that I at least try it. His reasoning was that since I’ve been narrating the story in past tense with a first person narrator this whole time, it’s pretty much assumed that things will turn out for the best (probably true). Putting the story in first person would probably serve to add a little mystery and uncertainty to the story.

So I thought, might as well give it a shot. I’d switched from third to first person already, and that had brought about a definite improvement, though I have to work harder to make sure that Rose’s constant state of terror doesn’t start to sound boring. On the other hand, I was already comfortable with writing in the first person. One of my early attempts at writing a novel was in the first person, and for a story written in my early-to-mid teens I did a pretty good job. Writing in the present tense was something I’d hardly ever done before.

So I rewrote parts of Chapter Three to start with, the parts that needed some holes to be plugged so that the story could continue to flow.Then I wrote Chapter Four, and over the past twenty-four hours or so I wrote Chapter Five. Both of those chapters and the parts of Chapter Three I rewrote were written in present tense. And it is weird for me. I don’t know many other authors who write that way, so I don’t have an example to refer back to. I’m basically feeling it out as I go.

But I somehow managed to do it. And it’s been a rather dramatic shift, like the DNA of the story has been altered. I keep thinking back to that scene from the first Sam Raimi Spider-Man film, when Peter Parker’s DNA gets rewritten by spider-DNA, causing his whole self to change. It’s that dramatic a shift, like the whole thing has changed in a very important way while still remaining the same basic story. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like it before.

Well, I’ll keep writing it in first-person present tense, hopefully gaining a knack for writing stories like this along the way (it could be useful for a future story). I just hope that when we meet again on Halloween, I don’t have to do another major change to the story. Writing this thing’s been hard enough as it is with just a busy schedule. Writing in unfamiliar styles and with so many new rules or ideas to incorporate certainly makes the job a bit tougher.

Well, it’s late, so I’m going to bed. Hopefully I’ll start Chapter Six tomorrow after classes and homework. Wish me luck, my Followers of Fear.

Autumn Semester 2014: Halftime Report

Posted: October 15, 2014 in Living and Life, Progress Report, Writing
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It’s Week 8 of the semester, which means it’s time I update you on how I’ve been doing so far in the semester. So if you haven’t heard the news so far, I’m extremely busy. I’ve got five classes and a thesis I’m working on, and a part-time job on top of that. I’ve got barely any time for blogging, and I’ve completely cut out television. And if I didn’t manage to find time most evenings right before bed, I’d think pleasure reading was some sort of drug the young people are on these days (though from what I hear that’s not the case at all).

Anyway, I’ve somehow managed to keep my grades up, though I’ll definitely try harder for the next exam in my History of War class, I’m not satisfied with the grade I got on the first one. My History of Pre-Modern East Asia course is going well, though the recitation class is a pain in the butt, even if it is somewhat helpful. Shakespeare is pretty interesting. The teacher is a fun character, and I’ve enjoyed reading Taming of the Shrew and The Merchant of Venice (we start Othello tomorrow as well as take our midterm). And remember that Biology course where we mainly watched movies about human anatomy? It’s like what I expected and then it’s not: most of the films we’ve watched deal with a lot of aspects of human health, so we’ve watched documentaries on our healthcare system and vaccines, a biopic on Louis Pasteur, and films on mental conditions like autism, addiction, and schizophrenia, among others. I think this week we watch a film about an English professor with cancer, but I’m not sure.

My creative writing class has been where I’ve learned the most, probably. I think I’ve made it clear that short stories are not my forte, but I’ve gotten some ideas on how to improve my short stories and my work in general. Already I’ve posted on some of the advice I’ve gotten from my classmates for one of my other short stories, and I’m looking forward to what they say about my next short story when I turn it in two weeks from now.

I’m also learning a lot from working on my thesis. My advisor, the other guy who’s also working on a thesis, and I don’t always have a lot of opportunities to meet up due to everyone having busy schedules and just the craziness of life, but I’ve found our sessions so far illuminating. While work on Rose has been slow due to the short story I’ve been working on for class, I’ve gotten some good advice on how to improve it, including making sure that the tone and atmosphere of the novel is consistent throughout. When it’s finished, I feel like it will have already have been edited a little bit due to the feedback I’ve gotten in the sessions we’ve had together.

Well, that’s all for now. I’ve got work to do, so I’m going to do it. I’ll update everyone again on how my semester is going when it’s over, so have a good 8-10 weeks until then. Until then, Followers of Fear. Wish me luck with the rest of the semester!

Video Rage: Two-Thirds Through the Second Draft

Posted: September 15, 2014 in Living and Life, Novel, Progress Report, Writing
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Well, it took me a little while (darn my school load!) but I’m finally done editing Chapter 24 of Video Rage. And since the second installment of the Reborn City series is 37 chapters long, I’m about two-thirds through the second draft.

So excuse me while I do a little happy dance…

Still here? Cool.

I think the hardest thing about editing VR is that a lot of it is rewriting. When you’re doing a first draft, you think  that a lot of what you included (including dialects in the narration) is just genius, the best thing for the English language since Shakespeare put quill to parchment or Hemingway put pen to paper or Stephen King put typewriter keys to…you know. And then you leave it alone for several months so you can look at it with fresh eyes, and then you think to yourself “What the f*ck was I thinking writing this crap?”

But I’m glad I’ve been able to take a second look at this. If I thought that the first draft was okay, I’m sure the second draft is going to impress maybe a few readers. That’s the hope anyway. In any case, I think after the second draft is done I’ll send VR to a certain science fiction writer I’m acquainted with who took a look at RC for me. I’m pretty sure his opinion on things will be very useful indeed.

Well, I’m hitting the hay. Big day tomorrow with lots to do, and I want to be well rested for it. Good night, my Followers of Fear.

Rose: The Thesis Has Begun

Posted: September 7, 2014 in Living and Life, Novel, Progress Report, Writing
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I’m happy to announce that I’ve just finished the first chapter of Rose, the novel I’m writing for my thesis. I started it yesterday after I’d finished my homework, and worked on it on and off throughout the day. I was really surprised by how quickly I got through it, but I think I can attribute that to this new diet I’ve put myself on. I think cutting out all the diet sodas and junk I’ve been eating has not only helped me lose a couple pounds, but maybe also sharpened my focus and creativity. Or perhaps something’s in alignment and this will pass when we move into Virgo next Tuesday.

Anyway, Chapter One was quite a bit of work. It’s always hardest for me starting a new project, especially with that first page. You want to start off with the right hook that’ll keep a reader’s interest and encourage them to keep going. It actually took me a few attempts to get going with this and find what felt right. But after I found an opening sentence that worked for me and after I managed to get a page typed, it sort of rolled on from there, and I had relatively little trouble writing out the rest. Which leads me to this morning, where I’m announcing for all the world to see and hear that I’ve finished the first chapter of the book.

My first impressions of this chapter is that it’s rather wordy (and phrase-y, too. I use plenty of fun phrases, like “the stars beneath her”). In fact, it’s 4,240 words over 15 pages. Not bad for a first chapter at all, and it wouldn’t surprise me if subsequent chapters were of a similar length.  The first chapter is also pretty uneventful until the last couple of pages, but it allows me to introduce Rose to readers and interest people in her before I actually start eh main events of the story and put her through so much horror that you can’t help but want to hope that she’ll make it out okay.

In the meantime, I’ll hopefully start on Chapter Two later this week and see how that goes. I’m meeting with a professor from the Japanese department on Tuesday to get some phrase translation, so that should be helpful (if I didn’t mention it earlier, Rose’s stalker is Japanese). And unless something comes up in the next couple of weeks worthy of an update or mention of Rose, I probably won’t do another update post until I’m at least seven chapters into it, about a fourth of the way through the book.

On an unrelated note, this morning I had a new idea for a short story and added it to my list, making for a new total of 300 short story ideas (and only nine of them written. God help me get through them all!). And tonight I might be able to do some more editing on Video Rage, so hopefully nothing will come up to prevent that from happening.

That’s all for now. I’ve got a meditation class to get ready for, so I’ll sign off now. Have a good day, my Followers of Fear, and wish me luck.

Editing a Key Detail in “Video Rage”

Posted: August 18, 2014 in Living and Life, Novel, Progress Report, Social Activism, Writing
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I’m about a third of the way through editing Video Rage. And while I was editing Chapter 12 yesterday, I had a bit of a problem that I had to really rack my brains to solve.

Does anyone remember the Kony 2012 video from two years ago? If you don’t, here’s a quick reminder: Joseph Kony is an African warlord leading a terrorist organization that recruits children to be soldiers and sex slaves. The video Kony 2012 exposed many people to Joseph Kony’s crimes to many people in the West for the first time, amassing nearly 100 million views and becoming one of YouTube’s most viral videos ever. However, despite a powerful Stop Kony campaign, a Cover the Night event, and a sequel to clarify points made in the first video, interest in Joseph Kony and Invisible Children, the organization behind the video, waned after questions of the legitimacy of the campaign came up and the video’s narrator/producer suffered a very public mental breakdown.

Maybe it was because I was really impacted by the video at the time, going out of my way to make a Kony 2012 T-shirt and participating in Cover the Night, but when I decided to make an original viral video in Video Rage, I wanted to use Kony 2012 as an example to compare to the viral video in the story. So I wrote it in, ignoring the reservations I had about using such a famous (and infamous video).

Well, perhaps there’s some truth to the phrase “Another year older, another year wiser.” I was 20 when I wrote that chapter, but I’m 21 as I edit the novel. And I decided to cut Kony 2012 from the story. It’s just that a well-known video like that being featured in my novel might do more harm than good, especially considering everything that went on in the aftermath. So I ended up replacing it with a fictional documentary that I made up pretty much while editing. It took me a while to come up with the subject matter behind the documentary and what it did to achieve the level of fame that it would inspire a viral video in the novel’s universe nearly forty years later, but I finally managed to come up with something that I was satisfied with. And hopefully any future reader will be satisfied with it as well.

So what’s the point of this post? I’m not sure there is a point. Maybe I just wanted to tell you all a story while letting you know how the editing for Video Rage is going. Or maybe I was trying to illustrate how something that seems like a good idea when you’re younger or at an earlier stage of a project (or both) can really seem like a bad idea later on and you just have to nix it. (Strange that Stephen King didn’t think of that when he wrote in that scene in IT with the kids all having sex with each other).

In any case, I’ve fixed what I considered to be a great problem with that one chapter of Video Rage, and I think that the rest of the draft will go smoothly…if I can stay on track with finishing the second draft of the book.

Well, that’s all for now. It’s late, so I’m going to bed. Have a good night, my Followers of Fear. I’ll update you on Video Rage and anything else that needs updating as time goes on. In the meantime, pleasant nightmares.

Why I CAN Believe It’s My Senior Year of College

Posted: August 14, 2014 in Living and Life, Progress Report, Reflections
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Imagine if you will a cloudy day in September 2011. A young man stands at the corner of 16th and College Road on Ohio State University’s campus. He is 18, casually dressed and a little cold but extremely happy and excited. Today is the first full day on campus as a student, and he’s walking around before he heads over to the Agriculture Building (wherever that is) to wait with several other students before Convocation, when he and so many other freshman will officially be greeted as students by President E. Gordon Gee and then from there begin their academic careers.

Three years of being here. Pretty good ones, too.

The young man feels that life si good. Already he’s begun making friends. He’s got a steady job at the financial aid office that pays well. He has a dorm room all to himself, and his own bathroom to boot. And he’s got people around him who are willing to help him if a problem arises, he need only ask. The only things to worry about are classes and getting to know what he needs to know in order to navigate college successfully. But he’s hopeful. He thinks he’ll learn what he needs to know before graduation.

Flash forward to August 2014. That young man is now 21, and he’s a full adult, as hard as it is for many, including him, to believe. He’s survived these last three years, and they’ve been pretty good for him, on the whole. He now lives in an apartment with a really good roommate a few blocks from campus, and he has an easy commute to his job, still in the financial aid office, where he’s earning a little more and is a valued member of the team (or so he likes to think they see him as one). He’s also done a lot besides attend classes in the past three years. His blog, which only had a few followers when he started writing it in August 2011, now has nearly 1200, a majority of them having subscribed through WordPress. He’s also started a Facebook page and a Twitter account, each with their own small followings, and, perhaps most amazing, he’s published three books.

And all around him, he notices one thing. He’s a senior now. This is his final year at Ohio State.

Yeah, that’s me. I’m a senior at Ohio State University. A lot has happened to me in the past three years, including all that stuff above. I survived my first year, with pretty good grades too. I survived the transition from quarters to semesters. I transitioned very well from dorm life to my apartment, and learning to live with someone else (besides a family member, I mean). I came out as bisexual, and was greeted with all the love and acceptance I could have ever hoped for. I went to Europe for three weeks, and it was amazing. And now I’m at the home stretch, with less than nine months till I don the cap and gown and walk down the aisle to graduate.

You know, it’s not too hard for me to accept the fact that I made it this far. I mean, I know that I should be saying “Where has the time gone? It felt like just yesterday I was a freshman.” Well, it actually feels like ages ago, way more than three years. I’ve had plenty of time to get used to it, actually. Technically I reached senior rank sometime back in January, but my double major required more credits to graduate. Besides, why would I want to graduate early if it meant not spending the full four years and getting to go on a study abroad trip?

Oh yeah, tuition costs.

Still, glad I got to do the full four years.

Anyway, even if I wanted to be disbelieving about the whole “I’ve-got-a-year-to-graduate” thing, it’s pretty hard to act that way when you’ve been doing a lot of work just to make sure that your senior thesis–which you volunteered to do–goes somewhat smoothly this coming year. And then there’s the whole thing about trying to find a job after graduation. I’m already well into my job search for after graduation. There’s a job fair next month I hope to attend, maybe see what sort of jobs or internships I can get my paws on. So yeah, I’m pretty much used to the whole senior thing. And with seventeen credit hours each semester, I don’t think I’ll be developing senior-itis anytime soon. I’m going to be working harder than ever before.

Only 9 months to go. Start counting.

Still, I plan to enjoy this year. I may still not have everything figured out (and I doubt I ever will), but I’ve figured out plenty, and I hope to use what I’ve figured out to help me navigate senior year. I have no idea what’ll happen when I’ve finished my senior year (though since I have no immediate plans to further my education, the only tuition bills I’ll probably be paying is my loans), but I hope that whatever I end up doing, it’ll be good for me.

I just hope somewhre along the lines I get to increase my readership and get plenty of people interested in my books! God willing that’ll happen someday soon.

What was your last year of college like? Did you have trouble believing it, or were you pretty used to it by the time it happened?

Rose: Outline Finished

Posted: August 6, 2014 in Living and Life, Novel, Progress Report, Writing
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Or at least the first draft is. There’s always a chance that my adviser will make me rewrite certain parts of it, but I hope to keep it like it is.

Anyway, late last night I went about finishing the outline, and somehow I managed to do it before it was too far past midnight. This outline gave me more problems than outlines usually do, because up until I started writing the outline I had only a few scenes planned out, so I had to come up with the rest as I was writing. Once or twice I had to actually go back and erase what I’d written before because I didn’t like which direction the story was going. Around the third attempt though I managed to get this story going in the right direction and from there it was just a matter of figuring out where I wanted to go, what would be the logical step to get there, and what sort of events could happen without stretching the limit of credulity.

In the end, I think this story will turn out very well. It’s about twenty-eight chapters, and will probably be around the normal length for one of my books, between eighty-five thousand and one-hundred thousand words. I often wrote the outline looking for plot holes and trying to find good ways to plug them up (I hope I succeeded). And I hope I create an interesting and somewhat scary story about a woman who dies but is resurrected by her stalker through magic and finds herself trapped in his house with not only him, but very malevolent supernatural forces. Thank goodness I have an adviser who will be helping me out with that part. He’s a published writer himself, so odds are he’ll have a few lessons to help me.

And while I’m waiting for my research books to arrive in the mail and for the new semester to start (three weeks from today, by the way), I think I’ll edit Video Rage. God knows it’s about time, and I have time to do it now before things get really crazy! In fact, I’ll start it today! But first I need to run an errand, then I need to vacuum the apartment, then I need to run the dishwasher, then I need to have lunch before I go to work, then I have work, and later tonight I’m supposed to be at a friend’s birthday party…life’s crazy sometimes.

Anyway, that’s all for now. I’ll keep you updated on Rose, Video Rage, and other projects as time goes on and I have news to give. Have a great day, my Followers of Fear.

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