Amelia's Blog

19 Sep. 1780,         My collegues and I received a most interesting visit yesterday eve. A man calling himself an interested party asked about our steam engine research. He said was from an influential Bavarian institution that would fund our advances if we agreed to help them with some biological research. I must admit, I feel skeptical that there is any future is such an activity, however my brother scientists expressed excitement. Even so, if they can help push our revolutionary (if you'll forgive the phrase) steam projects, we cannot pass up such an opportunity. 24, Sep. 1780         A most curious creature. Having the main appearance of an insect, this dimunative beast has the dexterity and flexibility of a rodent! It even has the hands of a racoon of some sort. Our Bavarian benefactor calls it a "drakul." Recognizing it instantly as the father of that infamous character Vlad the Impaler, I asked him why they named it so. He just smiled an unpleasant rictus and told

One of the most valuable things you can do as a writer is to write down scenes that come to mind. Even if they don't seem to connect to anything else you're working on. For instance: I wrote a quick horror-esque scene about... maybe a year ago. Nothing huge, but a boy cowering in an alley as a horrible creature bore down on him. Here, take a look. The boy ran. He stumbled over a trash can and looked behind him, breathing heavily, eyes wide with terror. The thing chasing him looked vaugely like a dog, but instead of fur, it was covered in scaley chiton. Its tail was long and whip-like, ending in a serrated boney spike. The boy choked on a scream and started running again. The creature paused briefly to savagely swat the garbage can out of the alley before picking up speed after the boy. The boy took a corner and was horrified to be face to face with a dead end. As he spun around looking for another way out, the creature padded around the corner. Barely able to draw breath, the

        I think anyone that does any kind of writing struggles with fear. Fear that no one will like what you wrote. Fear that your teacher won’t give you a good grade. Fear that what you write won’t make any sense.                  Now, I’m not gonna go on about writer’s block, because I think in most cases, all writer’s block is, is an excuse to dismiss the fear you feel. Put a tangible name to it. It probably helps to give writers something to fight. No one wants to deal with fear. That’s the whole point, in a way.         One think that I have noticed about my self these last several months, is that fear is insidious. Most times, you do not notice that it has crept up on you. You make excuses. “Oh, I’m too tired,” or “It’s hard to write AND work on my school work.” For me at least, I think these boil down to simple fear. After I finished the first draft of Adventure, Inc., I sent it out to a bunch of friends to read it. I decided to take two weeks to step back from it.         I t

I wonder if you can have TOO many social networks?

Testing from Ping.FM...

Cynthia looked over the top of the paper she was reading and glanced at her friend. The normally tall Hitomi was slouched down in the chair across from her, the stack of newspapers she took ignored in front of her. They were in Atlanta, looking into a bunch of strange robberies in the area. They grabbed as many different newspapers as they could, though they haven’t found much. Her friend, however had abandoned the search ad was staring into space. “I think I’m supposed to be the quiet one, Omi. You’re upsetting the universal balance.” Hitomi jumped slightly, and looked back at her blankly. A few slow blinks later, “What?” The paper hid the smile that threatened to break CJ’s normally impassive expression, and she watched her friend come back from wherever she was. Most likely, Alana was there with her. “You’ve been staring into space for the last hour. These papers aren’t going to read themselves, you know.” The obvious amusement in her voice made Hitomi raise an eyebrow. “Yeah.” She