Friday Photo: The autumn view outside my writing room

Posted on October 28, 2011 by SloanParker

For the Love of: Cooperative Games (no more time alone in jail for me)

Posted on October 26, 2011 by SloanParker

Thanks to my fabulous and wickedly smart uncle (Hey T!) I learned how to play Pandemic a few months back. It was my first time playing a cooperative board game where players work together rather than compete against each other. We just got our own copy of Pandemic and have been playing the two player version. I have to say, I love cooperative games like this!

Maybe it’s the romantic in me that prefers the non-competitive nature of the game. I really hate seeing my sweetie get frustrated when I’m kicking her ass in a game. I mean, all we have to do is mention the game Clue and I can see her get all serious like she might actually be able to beat me this time, then her expression falls as she thinks, Nope. She ALWAYS wins that game.

Then there’s the other night when we decided to play Monopoly, something we haven’t played in years. I think I ended up in jail 42 times. My mood was pretty good the first 40 times, but I hit the 41st and it was no longer funny. It was just sad.

At least with Pandemic if we go down, we do it as a couple and have some laughs at ourselves at the same time.

Now if we could just figure out how to always get us a happy ending in Pandemic, all would be right with the world. (I do love my happy, all-is-right-with-the-world endings.)

What’s your favorite board game? I’m a game geek and would love to try out some new ones.

Video I Love: The Perfect First Dance at a Gay Wedding

Posted on October 21, 2011 by SloanParker

Thanks to Claudia for sharing this one on Facebook.

If the video is not embedded above, you can watch here.

Yes, I’m a dork with my writing. And here’s why…

Posted on October 19, 2011 by SloanParker

I was writing the other day and got stuck with how to describe a fight scene. I needed some strong sensory descriptions. But how do you describe a fist slamming against someone’s body? I started lightly punching my fist into my hand, just pondering the fight scene, thinking about what it would sound like and feel like, really getting into the moment with my characters.

But I was punching my hand. That’s not right. So I proceeded to move my punches (albeit they were light punches) up my arm. Several slaps of fist to skin, I realized what I was doing. Yep, I was punching myself for my art.

I imagined someone seeing bruises all along my arms and asking, “How did you get these?”

“Writing.”

Duh. How else?

Behind the Stories: A Preview in Pictures

Posted on October 17, 2011 by SloanParker

When writing I often utilize my imagination, but I also will pull from my own experiences and the details I can recall about certain places I’ve been or people I’ve met. For Take Me Home I was able to use my experience of traveling across the United States on a passenger train.

But I also do a fair bit of research for each of my stories. I used to dread research, but I’ve learned to embrace it and see it as an opportunity for two reasons: 1) to learn something new about whatever I’m researching and 2) to expand my understanding of the world and the characters in which I’m writing about in a particular story.

I’m a visual person. I find pictures and videos helpful to really get into the story. Even if my description ends up nowhere close to the visual, the images create a spark of ideas in my mind that keeps the description from being stale and typical (at least typical for my writing and my usual vocabulary). Through my writing research I’ve learned about places, occupations, animals, symbolism, and more I might never have had a reason to delve into otherwise.

During my research phase of writing Take Me Home, I saved links and images and descriptions in one document for inspiration as I wrote. So I thought I’d share a preview of Take Me Home using only a sampling of the pictures from my research notes. Under each photo is a link where I found the photo and the credit if it’s available.

**Please note: Some may consider the following minor spoilers for the story, but the pictures give away only a few more specifics than the blurb and merely illustrate the story’s premise.

Photo Credit: Yuri_Arcurs