Product Review: L'Oreal Cleansing Balm

L'Oreal Cleansing Balm, EverCreme photo by Cee Martinez

The wonderful folks at Influenster.com sent me L'Oreal's Cleansing Balm free of charge for testing purposes. I was pretty excited because I really loved it when they sent me Clairol's Hair Food to test and to great results.

This "Cleansing Balm" had a lot in common with the Clairol Hair Food initially. They're both described as deep conditioners that would add softness and moisture to the hair without weighing it down. They're both complete with instructions that encourage you to rub it into your scalp for the most benefit.

Now, my hair is very fine and prone to dryness. I generally use pure coconut oil for my scalp and use the Clairol Hair Food for the ends of my hair because despite what it promised it weighed my hair down if used on the scalp.

The L'Oreal Cleansing Balm promises to replace shampoo. It says it is safe enough to use every day as a moisturizing cleanser. That sounded like a pretty cool idea to me because I have been looking into ways to shampoo less and the "Poo Free" home remedies of baking soda, or shampoo bars, or just plain not washing have been disastrous for me.

I used the Cleansing Balm only three days in a row before giving up on any hope of it replacing shampoo. My hair from the chin down was very shiny and soft, just as promised, but my scalp and my hair at the scalp was greasy and weighed down and just... gross. I couldn't even last a week trying it in replacement of shampoo. I had to do a vinegar rinse and then shampoo to get my hair looking decent. What a disappointment!! 

When I used it every few days as a deep conditioner for the ends of my hair, I was happy with the results. Just like the Clairol Hair Food it does make my hair shiny and soft and is basically a really good deep conditioner. I just couldn't use it to replace my shampoo.

Overall I give it 3 of 5 stars. The 3 stars is because it does work really well as a deep conditioner and I really like it as such, I can't give it five though, because it could never replace my shampoo.

Mad Writer's Club Week 8 -- BURNOUT

Writing goals are essential to getting anything completed. The main reason aspiring and frustrated writers fail is because they cannot find or make time to write, or if they can, they do not have a viable goal to reach for other than the concept of having an idea for the story and wanting to write it. Now wanting to write something is awesome but that's the easiest part, having an idea is even better but it's still kinda easy to have an idea. What matters is getting that damn thing completed!

There's nothing more fulfilling than just getting that beginning in and introducing your awesome character (you know, that scene at the beginning of your manuscript where the character has a long look at themselves in the mirror and you get to describe their hair color, skin type, bone structure, and what gemstone their eyes match). After that, you get to set the plot rolling by writing the catalyst scene that throws your character into turmoil and jeopardy and might even introduce them to the dreamy love interest or some other important character who is quirky, or cool, or tortured, or terrifying. There is such a RUSH in being able to breathe life into those scenes you've been rolling over in your head and at that point you can't stop writing!

The words just flow from your fingers. You find yourself laughing as you write or smiling smugly at your words. YOU ARE A MASTER OF WORDS and you get such a thrill at knowing how everyone is going to read this story and... and then...

The feeling leaves. It starts with hitting scenes that just don't excite you. They're important scenes but they don't feel right. You know you can come back and fix them later because of the rule of NO EDITING the first draft. Still, they're not as exciting as the scenes you can't wait to write.

So then you leave it a few days and then try coming back to work on more interesting scenes hoping to fill in the less interesting scenes later. That works for a short time but then even that loses it's luster. Writing becomes less and less every day, and what once was a torrent of words has become a drought. The manuscript gets put away and nothing more gets written.

That's burnout... fizzle out.... whatever you want to call it.

A good way of fighting burnout is by setting wordcount goals and making sure to meet the wordcount every day. It locks you into moving forward and even if the writing is bad the urge to turn back and delete or edit is curbed because you need to keep those precious words on the page so you can meet wordcount. It's the whole reason why National Novel Writing Month is so successful.

Sometimes, though, you even reach wordcount burnout! D: D: D: It's like, that goal of 2000 words becomes a goal of 1500 which becomes a skipped day which becomes a weekend off. Then it gets depressing when you find you haven't reached your weekly wordcount and it becomes easier to declare oneself defeated.

The only remedy I can see for this, if one does not want to abandon the story that is, is accepting the dwindling wordcount as a victory over writer's block rather than a failure to meet the self imposed standard. Writer's are naturally skittish creatures and it does no good to feel inadequate and depressed over something like the number of words written per day. Feeling like a failure only encourages giving up.

It's better to suffer a week or two, or even a month of writing days where only 200-600 words are written and trudging towards a second wind of epic writing than it is to become frustrated and give up completely on a manuscript when a daily wordcount of 1000-2000 is not met. Accepting the tiny wordcount results in a constant movement forward. The alternative of feeling inadequate and abandoning the manuscript only ends up in ashes and broken dreams.

I know they say "don't force it" but if you are really serious about finishing a longform manuscript I think you should force it when you've hit the wall. Squeeze out 200 painful words every day, even if they're words you are ultimately gonna overhaul or delete. Nothing about writing is easy, and pushing yourself to your limits even if your brain is tired, can only serve to toughen you up and prep you for sitting with a manuscript for the long haul.

Mad Writer's Club Week 7-- Clashing Storylines

One of the strangest thing about the manuscript I'm working on, (for all those keeping track it's my cracked out modern hockey rewrite of "Dangerous Liaisons"), is the schizoid differences between the various storylines of over a dozen characters.

Ideally, I outlined and intended to do a tongue in cheek rewrite just using the templates for the major characters, Valmont, Merteuil, Cecile, and Madame Tourvel. I really wanted to pay homage to the novel I am such a fan of, but also, I wanted to add a little bit of fun and humor to it, while also paying note to my rabid love of professional ice hockey. Even at THIS point it's already gone too far haha.

As the draft moved along though, weirder stuff began to pop up--like the talking goalposts, and a weird secret society that has its roots all the way up to the Vatican, and the appearance of a living saint! Truthfully, a lot of those storylines have a lot to do with my adolescent adoration for Anne Rice and the original "Dark Shadows" TV series. *salutes them*.

The storyline that surprised me the most, however, was how deeply I began immersing into the lives of the children of the characters. Initially they were just to be background fodder, only brought forward when needed as an excuse to bring character A (a nanny or parent) into a situation where they could interact with character B (another parent). Or they could pop forward with a cute scene or a reason to give a typically "bad" character a "see, she really has heart!" moment.

I couldn't bring myself to stay so distant though. Argh! I began to probe into the lives of the kids and spin tales for them. While the adults in this story are busy plotting, and seducing, and being seduced, what could the kids possibly be going through? Kids aren't stupid, even if things aren't spelled out for them they still notice when things are off. What sort of effect does all this craziness have on them?

And just like that, a door opened. Things in this reality are so weird that I began to write story-lines for the children that open doorways for them to other realities. A world where cursed mummies attack, flying monkeys descend, evil doppelgangers threaten, and magical scepters can transport them to different times and places! And this is not stuff just in the children's heads, this is REALLY happening to them right under their parents' noses and NO ONE notices.

Now the fun of it, is that none of these adventures are completely experienced upfront for the reader. The reader sees only slightly more than the parent sees, but not the whole picture. It'll just be a tease of the world that is mostly hidden from adults but is present and perfect for the children to escape into while the authority figures in their lives prance around their own soap opera.

Will any of this work? DOES THIS WORK?

I DON'T KNOW!

We'll see. The point is, I get to put in a mummy's curse. Woo!

*scampers*

Mad Writer's Club Week 6 --To Trigger Warning or Not to Trigger Warning?

You know how everything comes with a trigger warning these days?

It's an increasing trend I'm seeing, this whole trigger warning business.

The first time I saw the trigger warning tag was back in the days of fan-fic and it was sandwiched among stories that held tags like M/M, non-con issues, bdsm, trigger warning: contains ass babies. Readers of all sorts traversed the world of fanfic and the writers, intoxicated with their strange sort of internet fame (every now and then someone got a cease and desist email from a famous person's lawyer, eeeeef!) began to oblige sensitive readers who demanded stories should have ratings on them because sometimes they just want to read a cute Harry Potter fanfic where Hermione takes initiative and wins Harry's heart, and they don't want to be surprised by Professor Trelawny getting it on with the Weasley twins while Ron is being forced to watch while gagged and bound on a chair.

The trigger warning increased, however, as readers wanted trigger warnings for more than just the bizarre, but also for the potentially emotionally upsetting. Everyone is unique in personality and experiences, and so one cannot anticipate the traumas a potential reader has gone through, and how they process reading scenes that may or may not remind them of bad things. This has always been true as long as there has been fiction writing, and as long as there have been people who have gone through traumas. In the old days, the only way a reader could avoid something with a triggering moment would be if someone else had read a certain novel or story and warned their friend off it, in case it might upset them.

The first time I ran afoul of the trigger warning code was when I posted a fanfic of pirates, and bad piratey behavior happens in it, which basically means murder, looting, rape, and mayhem. The pirates were not good guys by any means, and I wasn't presenting them as such, nor did I condone the bad stuff they were doing. It was just a pirate story.

Feeling pretty satisfied with it I posted it, got a few good reviews and then a very long, very upset review appeared. In it, I was called out for not putting a trigger for the bad things in it. I had ruined her day. I had ruined the characters she loves. The "R" for violence and sex tag I had put on it did not come close to covering what she had been assaulted with while reading. The bottom line, I was rude and uncaring and insensitive to her as a human being. I needed to apologize.

I didn't apologize. She felt bad after reading it, yeah that's sad, but... well... her existence did not come into play as I was writing the damn thing and after posting it? Well... I still don't know what I am supposed to feel. I've seen and been through some horrible things in my own lifetime, just as countless other people have, and those horrible things often show up in my writing. Of course those things are upsetting, they're supposed to be. That's why there are horrible things.

One way of coping after experiencing horrible things is to pretend horrible things do not exist. Now, it's understandable and good for someone who is fresh off a trauma to avoid that particular trauma if they can until they've healed enough to process the badness of the world again, but to avoid it completely for the rest of their lives and ask complete strangers to shield them as well? I'm just not on board with  that.

I have had editors tell me "this scene might be triggery", and although I have done what I can to tweak certain scenes to appease an editor I still can't shake that nagging irritation I feel at being told I have to self-censor to avoid hurting someone's feelings.

I don't think I'll be including one in the manuscript I'm writing. There will be material that is violent or aggressive, or hair raising or whatever. Perhaps there will be a reader or two who will be happily reading along and then they'll run into a chapter or scene where they go, "WTF this shit is upsetting!" They'll fling their kindle aside and never read it again.

 I am not answering to an editor, and potential readers are not my editor either. Sure, there will be some scenes and storylines that might upset someone or other... but I think we can all get through it and survive.

Mad Writer's Club Week 5 --Finding Repetitive Phrases

As I'm  sludging through rewrites of my cracked out modernized hockey rewrite of Dangerous Liaisons, I am finding little annoying things. The worst things are little words and phrases used over and over again, they are sort of like... they must be the way my brain narrates naturally and they pour onto the page unfiltered and they MUST BE DESTROYED!

It's embarrassing finding little things like that but hell, just snip em and be done right?

What I am finding is that I have a tendency in rough drafts of describing everything as "a bit". She smiled a bit. He walked a bit. He laughed a bit. He moved forward a bit. She fell down the stairs, broke her arm, and fell down a pit of doom... a bit.

That's gotta be annoying for any reader to be met with. I know that sometimes when I read someone else's manuscript little word quirks like that will pop out at me and when that happens I cannot unsee them! It's aggravating! Argh! So when you read over a manuscript of yours, look for words that pop out at you frequently. If you notice words appearing multiple times in a paragraph, or worse, in a sentence, snip them out.

I recently had a manuscript rejected but with personal critique. The editor liked it but they noted that the frequency of the word "yet" was throwing them off in the story. WHAT! I gasped. And I looked over the manuscript and did indeed find a lot of "yet"... well maybe not a lot, maybe the editor was having a bad day and the word "yet" was just particularly irritating. Something . >_>

The point is, do NOT leave it to chance. Edit out those strays. Pluck em! NOW! DO IT!

Remember though, when you are writing a first draft, do not do anything to it. Just keep writing forward, and wait til second draft time to start plucking strays. If you keep backtracking and plucking strays or worse, getting paranoid about which words to choose while you're writing draft one you'll never get a thing done and this is what stops probably about 90 percent of aspiring authors who can never finish a draft of anything.

Awrite I'm done here. See ya next week. XD

Mad Writer's Club Week 4 -- Jumping the Shark

Yeah we all know what Jumping the Shark is right? The legend of Fonzie jumping over a shark in "Happy Days" because the writer's had literally run out of all the plots and like... prolly drugs and stuff. Well even if you didn't know the origin of the phrase, you may have known the meaning which is basically when a writer has no clue what to do so they just open up the corral holding in the pink elephants.

I personally love when things jump the shark. I know it's considered a sign of a series, movie, television, or book hard up for fresh ideas and we're supposed to groan and stuff and moan about how things are just gonna get moar stoopit from now on in the story lines but whatevs man. I like shiny things. I love bizarre things.

So with my cracked out hockey rewrite of Dangerous Liaisons you can prolly say I began by jumping the shark, and that's prolly true, cause OMG WTF PREMISE! Well, if there's any doubt about it, I made sure to jump the shark early on in the manuscript. Mysterious intruder fixated on one of the wives? Bring it. Hockey player from a rival team so in love with another player that he sends him a deluge of tasty gift baskets to his hotel room? Check. Talking goal posts? Yup. Flying monkeys? Oh... they're coming.

There's going to be an experiment here. How willing will the reader be to traverse this messed up universe? How many genres can I mash into one tale? Can I mix both adult romance and children's fantasy into one storyline? Slapstick and melodrama, mush it all together! CAN I DO IT!

Well I sure as hell am going to try.

The thing that annoys me in anything, whether it's painting, or writing or music... whatever, is the words "You can't such and such...." . If it can't be done then it SHOULD be done. Everyone else is following rules so you may as well bend or break them. If it sounds stupid, it probably is but who cares if you're having fun?

:)

Mad Writer's Club Week Three : Meet My Characters--The Lafets

Week three has arrived! And I seem to be spending more and more time on the rewrites for my insane hockey romance soapie reimagining of "Dangerous Liaisons". So let's meet moar characters!

Well let's meet Cecile Danceny!

She is of course, based on the character Valmont is supposed to seduce in "Dangerous Liaisons"-- Cecile de Volanges. Perky, achingly young, and naive, (the love interest of Chevalier Danceny). In "Dangerous Liaisons" she makes a tasty target and provides like ZERO challenge for Valmont. Well, the poor kid is like fourteen, what sort of fight is she gonna put up against a skeezoid old French rake? *shudders*

I mean just look at this poor innocent thing! Also, holy hamsters there was a time fairuza Balk was innocent!

The original Cecile is not much of a deep character, she is more like a lamb to slaughter. I originally intended the Cecile in my draft to be just as sweet and clueless. I began with her as a cheerful young nanny and a former parochial school girl, and I started writing her as a veritable sitting duck of girlhood and piety. The more I wrote of her, however, the more she began taking on the upstanding Madame de Tourvel's qualities, and well, I went with it.

Madame de Tourvel is the second target assigned to Valmont to seduce. The spotless wife of a member of French Parliament, she has attracted the disdain of Madame de Merteuil who wants to see her fall from her porcelain pedestal. Tourvel presents an epically tough challenge to Valmont and by the time he does get around to seducing her, he's fallen in love with her. (men, i swear!)

So in my rewrite, Cecile is going to have the qualities of both of these characters. She will start out as innocent, curious, girlish, but as the heat turns up and the Valmont character, Christopher Patrick, comes on strongly, Cecile becomes tougher, and begins to dip into her devoutly Catholic faith to try warding him off.

Not only that, but my Cecile belongs to a family tree that appears in and out of my manuscripts and short stories, The Lafets.

I like to connect almost all of my stories and manuscripts and poems together with reappearing characters. I have a few families that I like dipping into. I have the Forresters, the Bertrands, the Cromwells, and The Lafets.

The Lafet family is my most magical sort of family, and probably the most bonkers. They are very eccentric, and wealthy, the women in the family tend not to marry, generally have daughters, and are often tormented by madness and paranoia. They are prone to supernatural experiences and powers, and sometimes a Lafet woman can become quite powerful and apt to abusing that power. They're a perfect perpetual Greek Tragedy. Woo! :D

So the angle I want to work with my darling Cecile, who is a Lafet on her mother's side, is that she is young and innocent but as she matures, and finds her power and voice as a grown and increasingly sexual woman, she is also plagued by devastating fears about her family history and the possibility of madness. It's hard to talk TOO MUCH about her issues cause that will start giving away certain plot points. EEK!

Well that's all for today!

Thanks for sticking with this ~_~

Mad Writer's Club Week 2 -- Meet The Characters

If you've known me online for any number of years, and I'm talking a lot of years, you are quite familiar with my insane modern hockey rewrite of Dangerous Liaisons, and very familiar with my characters. So this post isn't for you. It's for everyone else who hasn't had the privilege of meeting my crack for brains characters.

So if you're still reading... HI!

I'll talk about just a couple of characters.

If you're not familiar with the novel "Dangerous Liaisons" you probably are familiar with the movie versions. The most famous one would of course be the version with Glenn Close and John Malkovich, followed closely by the modern remake starring Sarah Michelle Gellar and Ryan Phillipe. My favorite version happens to be "Valmont", starring Colin Firth and Annette Bening.

Why? Because even though "Valmont" takes the most liberties with the novel (and who am I to judge because... um hockey...), I do think "Valmont" has a fresher cast that sparkles with gleeful cruelty and innocence. There is JOY to them that I think lacks in the other versions. The other two versions just take themselves SO SERIOUSLY and ... ugh I just wanna beat the starch outta em.

Ah well.

So going forth!

First off , you cannot have Dangerous Liaisons without Madame de Merteuil!

Beautiful, bored, widowed, unstoppable! In the novel she is the centerpiece, the spider pulling all the strings. She manipulates everyone around her into thinking she is a generous, loving, chaste widow. She is everyone's best friend and the cream of society. Out of cruelty, she plays games with her former lover, seducing people on dares, breaking hearts and destroying lives!

She will be portrayed in my crackhouse of a novel by "Minni Patrick".

In a departure from the source material, Minni will be married, a mother of three! Thirty four years old, and seemingly a friendly, fluffy, blonde beauty of a housewife, no one around will realize the wicked games she is playing as she manipulates everyone out of their innocence, and hearts, and SOULS! Mwahahaha!!!!

Her character, however, will be tinkered with my melodramatic touches. She will have a tortured past, where she will have developed skills for manipulation to survive... but she also finds she has a taste for the cruel. She will love and protect her children with all of her heart, but at the same time, she will view the rest of humanity with a cold practicality.

I'm hoping to balance softness and sharpness, and will give her no middle ground!

Next up, say hello to the Vicomte de Valmont!!

Handsome, rakish, dandy, cruel! He devours innocence and hearts for fun, he matches wits with Madame Merteuil and when she throws him the gauntlet of gauntlets in the game of Broken Hearts he happily dives in to the demise of just about everyone involved.

Tinkering with this character, I have cast Valmont in the character of "Christopher Patrick". Minni's husband and the star goaltender for his hockey team. Even though he and Minni are married, they keep the spice in their relationship alive by seducing those around them and comparing notes. They give each other assignments and dares, and revel in the results.

Christopher will be a star at the peak of his career, drowning in accolades, and league records. To the adoring public he will be quirky, neurotic, a man of eccentric legend. To his family he will be fiercely protective and sometimes silly. Still, he will be driven by his need to own and dominate those in his shadow. Sex is a cold, mechanical thing to him, and it's a tool to claim a soul for him, it's a way to pass time, it's a way to control someone. What will drive his story is the gauntlet Minni will lay down for him, and his need to play the game all the way through, perhaps even past fatal limitations!

So there it is, a couple character sketches!

I hope this sounds interesting enough xD.

*scampers*

Mad Writer's Club! Week 1! THE BLOG POST OF DESTINY!

So I have agreed to join the mad writer's club and to be in the club there is blogging and there is writing and most importantly... blogging. ~_~

I'm a horrible blogging because I tend to just purge out everything on ALL THE SOCIAL NETWORKS that by the time I get to my blog I'm like... meh? So I've avoided a lot of networking today and come to the blog and ... whatevs.

LOL

Ok forrealz though.

We're doing like 90 days of writing all the things that can be written. So what is my goal for this venture?

Well I have two projects in mind and I will be alternating on both or both at the same time or whatevs when I have the time to tack away at them. My main project for the short term is to put a new chapbook of poetry together. You may or may not have become acquainted with my previous chapbook of poetry, The Yellow Staircase. It's also available in paperback! Well I have this urge to put out a new chapbook of poetry, and I might mix it up by throwing together poems and stories or something... I need a theme still so I'm just gonna write poems until a theme forms. Sounds like a good idea right?

I also want to get a new novel rolling. I have a few strong ideas going but I also am dusting off an oldie. It's a completed first draft that I am going to completely rewrite by hand so it's going to be tedious to do but it's gotta get done.

The novel is a modern rewrite of Les Liaisons Dangeureuses. It oringinated as a hockey fanfic and I am going to retool the entire sucker and release it onto the unsuspecting public. It'll be amazing. It'll be hilarious. It jumps the shark 15 chapters in. IT JUMPS THE SHARK!

Will it actually be amazing? Dunno.... lol Hopefully it'll be fun. I want to write something just for fun! With The Yellow Staircase I gutted my emotions to create a collection of poems that is near and dear, raw and pointy and it just makes me nervous to think people read it.

My novel Antipathia (also in kindle) also was a work that emotionally drained me what with all the angst and vampires and blood.

I want to do something fun! So I won't apologize for starting work on a soap opera hockey retelling of a celebrated French Classic that will at some point include a scene where hockey goalposts develop a mind of their own and sabotage a professional hockey game in Montreal. (there will also be flying monkeys and a mummy's curse, because I always thought Dangerous Liaisons needed more monkeys)

So far I have a week's worth of chapters rewritten and queued for MOAR REWRITES and I have written five poems.

*wanders off*

The Day I Snapped and Slaughtered My E-Books....

I have too many .99 cent/free ebooks on my kindle and I've finally snapped. I used to be able to read a book cover to cover no matter how bad it was but I've read so many poor quality stories in a row that I finally put a book down 50% through (it was a horrible novel about the Romanovs, Rasputin-kink and some sort of weird fetish for ambergris) and I DELETED it without finishing it. CAN OPEN. WORMS EVERYWHERE <---is that a "Friends" quote? Whatevs, I digress.

The point is I can't seem to finish a book anymore! I'm stopping and deleting at the 50, 30, and 20% mark, I've GONE MAD! I deleted 38 books in the past day and a half and it feels AMAZING! MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

I'm still feeling fussy for a seriously good novel or something though. Most of the deleted books were Part 1's in all sorts of promised trilogies and I've had it up to HERE with the idea of any sort of trilogy at this point ~_~.

On a happy note though, I did start a book today and am quite delighted to find it not only well written, but historically accurate, and with interesting characters and dialogue. Go figure it's a WWII spy/French Resistance/Parisian/Nazi novel with a Spanish girl pretending she's French pretending she's a prostitute so she can pretend to seduce a Nazi Colonel to find out the whereabouts of her missing father, only to get into a situation where she actually BECOMES a prostitute for another Nazi who might not be who he seems either.

YOU JUST CAN'T MAKE THAT STUFF UP FOLKS.... or maybe you can, seeing as the book IS fiction soooo..... yeah, whatever, THE POINT IS, it's good and you can't really go wrong with Nazi French Resistance Paris plots even if you don't have Nazi kink which I don't have but that's the sort of post for another day (my thoughts on Nazi kink and the people kinked out on it ugh)... or something.

So She Takes a Deep Breath.... and destroys herself...

Of course I am being melodramatic to the extreme but I am a bit terrified by what I've done. It can't be undone which results in a big That's That.

I am freakishly behind on my book reviews, and I am behind on two raw manuscript reviews that I need to read but I guess the tardiness is good because it means I've been working on projects. The first project that is complete and now for sale on Amazon is my second chapbook of poems, "The Yellow Staircase".

As a project this terrifies me because the poems contained within are vicious, depraved, heartbroken, lustful, foul-mouthed,and straight up pornographic (some of them are at least.) It is a collection I am uncomfortable with releasing, especially imagining the idea of someone I know face to face reading it and thinking they can glean things about me which they'd not known. Some of the poems are reprints from other magazines, one of them even won an award, but the majority of the volume is untested on readers, and never put through an editor.

I really felt I had to put this together and get it done however. It marks my first foray into self publishing, and in a way is a tester for how to work the process. It also marks the purging of a huge weight that has been sitting in my heart for the better part of a year. It was a horrible mix of emotions that had to leave me in some way or other and pulling them out and putting them on paper (no matter how ugly they are) has really helped me along.

I am selling the chapbook for a few dollars less than a chapbook goes for, $6.00 for 33 poems, and 56 pages. There is a fragile storyline threading the poems, the setting is a shattering relationship as seen through the eyes of a disillusioned and angry girl who has entrusted her confidence to a fraud of a fortune teller who has stolen her words and sold them to the world.

If you are feeling adventurous, curious, or just plain voyeuristic, please do go ahead and buy the volume of poems! I will be eternally grateful. If you buy "The Yellow Staircase" and enjoy it, I would very much welcome a review posted to Amazon to help get the word out. I am advertising the chapbook only here and on Twitter, so I can use all the help I can get!

USA Buy Link: The Yellow Staircase
UK Buy Link: The Yellow Staircase
Createspace Buy Link: The Yellow Staircase

Love and Hugs to All of You! xxx

Influenster VoxBox: Sugar and Spice

I received a voxbox from Influenster.com about a month ago, it was called the Sugar and Spice voxbox and as I love all things sugar and spice I was quite pleased. VIDEO PROOF

There were quite a few goodies in it as can be seen in the video and this voxbox I found quite special as I really ENJOYED most of them! The Dickinson's Witch Hazel facial towelettes are a joy and I now make sure I always have a box of them in the house and one or two in my purse. They're all natural and gentle, and as my skin is super sensitive (I really need to live in a porcelain bubble guys !!!!) the fact that I did not once break out in an irritation or rash says A TON. I heartily recommend them. :)

The Belvita Breakfast Biscuits were yummy and I ate them almost immediately out of the box. They have a snappy texture similar to a ginger snap and they actually did satisfy my hunger at that point and stayed me over for a bit. They are definitely a good snack to have on hand to stave off hunger and get some lasting energy. They are not gluten free unfortunately so I hope to see them come out with a gluten free variety soon.

The Nectresse sweetener isn't bad. I'm not entirely sure how "natural" it is but it didn't give me crippling migraines like some artificial sweeteners do so that's a plus. I quite like it sprinkled on my porridge in the morning.

As for the Colgate Optic White program. The toothbrush and mouthwash are my favorites of it. The mouthwash doesn't sting and the toothbrush really does leave me feeling squeaky clean. The toothpaste, however, is a bit abrasive on my sensitive mouth so I ended up switching back to my normal toothpaste brand.

The Vaseline Spray and Go moisturizer was a disaster for me. I'm sure it's quite nice for others, and indeed it did absorb, dry, and moisturize in a flash just as promised, BUT it did give me rashes and irritate my senses. So it's not a product for me.

All in all, I was quite happy with this voxbox and even found some products I would like to continue using! :)

I received these products complimentary from Influenster for testing purposes.

The Next Big Thing

I am posting this blog meme a wee bit late but better late than never. If you are a writer with a blog please leave me a note and I'll tag you, and link to your blog, then next Wednesday (or any belated day after) answer these questions, blog em, post em, tag away!

The purpose of this meme is to let everyone know a bit about what you got cooking--novel wise. So, here are the beans on the manuscript I have that is the closest to completion. Cheers!

I was tagged by the lovely and talented Rebecca Emin whose blog can be found here.





What is the working title of your book

For right now. "Blood Brilliant" although that is very much a working title.

Where did the idea come from for the book?

The main idea came from an image I had in my head of a woman struggling with a man who snaps her neck. It came from a nightmare I suppose, but I began to wonder what circumstances led that woman there and what could I build around it.

What genre does your book fall under?

Young Adult paranormal.

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?

Oh dear! Let me think. For the lead, Talitha, I would really like an unknown. She's a temperamental  tough, Texan who does not fit the stereotypical svelte body of a Hollywood ingenue and I'd hate to see the role go to someone who is just wearing a fat-suit or gaining weight for the role. I'd like her to be played by someone authentic.

Her father, Ethan Curie, however is totally Brenden Gleeson. Nuff said.

For Robert Christobel I'd love to see a young Spanish or Mexican actor.

Danielle Blakely I'd love to see played by Kat Graham.

Lena Mirinova would be brilliant for Olga Kurylenko and Antonius Merryn is perfect for someone like Bill Nighy.

Amy Ryan would be awesome for Annie and Rose Byrne would be a great fit for Miranda.

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

A young girl suffering from a lifetime of loss and self loathing is ripped from her shell as she is forced to fight for the life of her new best friend who has been kidnapped and held hostage by vampires.

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

I am still considering self publishing but the prevalence of good indie press out there has me really loving the idea of submitting to small market publishers. I am not at all concerned with money or instant prestige so much as I just would love to have my story out there.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?

The first draft took about one year to write before edits. I sat on the IDEA for about 11 years, haha, before actually rolling up my sleeves and doing it, however.

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

I feel it is a lot closer to the young adult books I read growing up, like "The Silver Kiss" and "Blood and Chocolate" by Annette Curtis Klause, and "The View From the Cherry Tree" by Willo Davis Roberts. There is a combination of paranormal and suspense thriller to it that I think matches well with those types of books. It's the element of a young person suffering who is still forced to take matters into their own hands when things go over their head.

Who or What inspired you to write this book?

I think my inspiration to write it has always been my love of reading, above anything else. I grew up devouring books and I loved being a reader but then I began to feel the urge to create something of my own for someone to read. I remember being frustrated at times however, as books geared towards my age group often were 90 percent love triangle and 10 percent action, and so I began by writing the story I would like to read.

Also, I am a rabid fan of the vampire genre, and the beautiful thing about that genre is that the author has the freedom to create whatever world they please. The trend right now is towards a beautiful, romantic sort of hero, and that's fine. What I wanted to create however, is a vampire who is more an unabashed villain, someone pitiless and cruel. My protagonist is a teenage girl who despite all her emotional ills and traumas has a solid core that she needs to rediscover for herself. The vampires in this case serve as the rat in the grain exposing that core, but they are not the crutch for her to create a new sense of self.

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

I think it will appeal to the reader who is looking for a dark, vampire tale without all the sweetness of romance and longing. If the reader is looking for a lone-wolf style heroine and vampires that stay evil, well then, this book is for them.

In Which Baking Happens...

Awrite, there's a diet for everyone nowadays, and no one (including me) can digest anything, and when you think about it, if any of us were born like 100 years ago or even 50 years ago, our parents would-a already left us to the woods for the wolves to clean up the weak, or in one of those weird cubicle buildings where children were sent when they exhibited symptoms that we know nowadays are related to environmental illness, or learning disability or, being a hipster or like... just not comprehending how to make your bed every morning, and using "bible" as a verb. (As in: Learn to bible and you'll see the path!) <---Note I have no issues with religion or the bible or anyone's belief system--unless yer a Nazi--in which case I have a face for you.... >:[

Anyhow, Mom delivers to me a recipe for flat-bread which was given to her by another friend who got it from someone--prolly off the internet. This is bread she can actually HAVE!!! *le gasp* So I made it today to give it a whirl.

The attraction of this bread is that it's gluten free and GRAIN free and yet still soft enough to have an enjoyable cold sandwich. It's also full-a flavor and good things like that. So here's the recipe and I shall include hastily taken last minute pictures as well.

Simple Flatbread--recipe credited to Kristin Kons



Ingredients: 1 1/2 cups blanched almond flour (I used ground almond, worked just fine)

3/4 cup tapioca flour

1/3 cup (2TBS whole seeds) ground flax or ground chia seeds (I used ground chia seeds which I got at Whole Foods)

1 tsp xylitol or raw honey, or 7 drops liquid stevia <-- I forgot to use any sweetener and the bread came out just fine. :)

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp sea salt (I have a bad feeling I used one whole tsp of both the soda and salt but it seemed to have turned out fine. Just obey the recipe tho)

3 organic eggs

1/3 cup plain organic yogurt--preferrably low or full fat

Any dried herbs mixed with sea salt--Italian season, Frontier adobe seasoning blend, or whatever seasoned salt you like (I used a mix of dried Italian herbs and sea salt)



Directions:

1. Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit

2. In a large bowl, combine almond flour, tapioca, ground flax or chia, xylitol, baking soda, and salt

3. In a small bowl blend eggs and yogurt.

4. Add the egg mixture into the dry ingredients and use mixer to stir to combine it until it forms a sticky, wet dough. (I actually stirred the herbs into the dough here)

5. Pour batter in a 12x16 jelly roll pan/cookie sheet lined with parchment paper or a silicon baking mat. Smooth batter out with a spatula over the entire surface area, so it is thin and even.

6. Sprinkle herbs of choice and sea salt (if you are using a salt free seasoning blend) evenly over the dough.

7. On center rack of oven, bake at 350 degrees for 8 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Don't over bake or it will be too dry.

8. Cool and cut into desired size. I like using a pizza cutter to do this.

Notes: The bread stores best wrapped in parchment paper and sealed in a Ziploc bag. It keeps longer stored in the fridge and can be frozen.

I cut the bread into squares and it tasted great as a savory sandwich bread. It's soft and tasty. :) xx

Blog Hop for Rebecca Emin: When Dreams Come True

This is a post to celebrate the release of my dear friend Rebecca Emin's latest novel, "When Dreams Come True". The theme of the day is making positive dreams manifest so I'll chat a wee bit about dreams.

I am a lucid dreamer, which can be a good or bad thing depending on the sort of dream one is having. It's rather a better time having a dream of a canoe trip down a rainbow river with Cillian Murphy feeding you grapes than say, a dream that involves a burning roof and a wheezing attempt at escaping a cheesy slasher movie fiend. As an adult, I find these dreams, both the good and bad, to be something to look forward to. It's a wonderful escape into fantasy and a great stress reliever, or on occasion problem solver to be able to dream like this.

As a child, however, the dreams could be confusing and not so fun, especially if there were periods of time when I couldn't quite tell if the tiger I'd barely survived running from was real or in a dream. The nice dreams, however, not only told me I could be anything I wanted, they also let me FEEL it. As a child, dreaming that I could be a pirate or gunslinger, Bond girl or international spy, were glorious reminders that I was not as small and plain and shy as I felt during the day.

I was often crippled by loneliness and shyness, even in the presence of friends as a girl, and sometimes even now, but the dreams never failed to energize and excite me. There came a point, when I was quite young, where I couldn't bear the period of forgetting that comes after waking from a dream. So I began to write them down, unicorns and dragons, Queens and attacking extra-terrestrials all began to appear within the pages of the spiral bound notebook kept by my bed. Of course I wanted to share the dreams with everyone else, and so the dreams soon became stories.

"You're going to be a writer!" People would tell me, and I would feel a rush of happiness and dare I say... pride upon hearing it, which is not a feeling I attached to anything else accomplished by my little hands at the time. I received compliments on imagination and creativity, and I never failed to point out that everything came from dreams, without them I'd have empty pages.

Such is the importance of dreams.

Another hearty congratulations to Rebecca Emin, an accomplished writer who is certainly fighting for her dreams.

Weird Dream

In my dream I was standing in an attic, looking out the attic window to see a large stretch of sand poured over grass. I see Thomas Edison next to me and he is quite proud of his accomplisment. He has ten bears covered in sand and then electrocuted to death. The bears hit the sand and there is a ripple of light over it.

I begin talking to someone else, a man whom I don't recognize and can't remember the face of, almost as if nothing had just happened. I feel split at this point as if the sleeping me is horrified by what happened to the bears, but the dream me is like "whatever."

Edison begins talking but we ignore him. I don't remember what I was talking to this man about.

Out of the corner of my eye I see ten elephants arranged on the sand. I think nothing of it except that they're cute.

"The sand will absorb all of it. It becomes harmless to us," Edison says.

I still ignore him.

The elephants are covered in sand until they resemble concrete statues, then they are electrocuted as well. They suffer a lot and scream as they hit the ground. The sand ripples with waves of light but Edison is right, the electricity stops at the sand and does not touch the grass.

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Oookay. Weirded out so I found a dream symbol site to try and make heads and tails of this.

Symbols:

Attic--Is the intellect, repressed thoughts and connection to higher self. The spirituality.

Grass--The part of yourself that you can always rely on. A natural protection.

Sand--Shift in perspective and a change in attitude.

Thomas Edison (Inventor)--Symbolizes personal achievments. An attempt at elevating personal consciousness.

Window--Looking out the window represents the outlook on life. Your point of view and awareness and the need to mull over a desicion.

10--Corresponds to closure and great strength. Also represents the ten commandments.

Bears--independance, death and renewal and resurrection. A period of introspection and thinking, one might have things they need to "lay bare".

Electrocution--indicates your current course of actions will lead to disaster. It represents fear and the consequences of your actions. One needs to pay attention to their own surroundings.

Man--denotes the aggressive, competitive, rational side of oneself. --a/n UM EXCUSE ME?

Elephants--a need to be more patient and understanding. Maybe a need to let go of the past (memory held on for too long). Also a symbol of power, strength and intellect.

Also a symbol of the Republican Party.

Torture--*note: the Elephants suffered the bears showed no signs of feeling pain* suggests one is punishing oneself for their own bad habits by projecting it onto another symbol in the dream. It can also symbolize revenge fantasies. Consider the symbol being tortured.

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Okay! Let's take a look shall we?

I'm in the attic, so therefore in a room with my "rational side" (man) and my "creative accomplisments side" (Edison). My "rational side" is distracting me with conversation, and lulling me away from the things I have an opinion on. (window)

A change of opinion (sand) is being poured over the part of me that I can always rely on, my protection (grass).

A strong, complete part of me (10) is being laid bare (bears) on the change of my opinion. (sand) This is a huge mistake and will lead to disaster. (electrocution) ---does this mean if I actually shared a bit more of myself as I've been pondering lately that it will be a huge mistake??? D:

The disaster (electrocution) is absorbed by my change of perspective (sand) and does not touch my core. (the grass)

As this disaster (elec) occurs, my rational side (man) keeps me talking, while my creative side (edison) tries to get my attention. My creative side caused the first disaster so it is setting up the next.

A powerful (10) part of my past that I'm holding a grudge over --or the Republican party hahaha what???-- (elephants) is now arranged over my change of opinion (sand). My creative side (edison) tells me that it's going to be okay because my core (the grass) will keep me safe despite what happens.

The symbol of my grudge --or the republican party?? haha-- (elephants) is destroyed and suffers horribly, fulfilling my need to obliterate it. (torture)

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Okay....so this might be an optimistic dream. Both my rational and creative sides are telling me that despite whatever disaster I am going to cause for myself and THE WORLD *cackles* I will still be safe at my core, and will get through it. I am going through some sort of transition and it's gonna cause trouble but no worries cause I'll still be me.

Wow...so basically sucks for everyone else, but here I come? XD