10-23-08: I finished editing Masks in Moonlight today. It's finally done! Whew! Now whether to go on to Child of Fire like planned or work on the supernatural phone mystery story or the one about the half-blooded knight...

8-28-08: This is irrelevant, seeing as I've put nothing new up but a chapter index and some number counts, but I just remembered that I forgot to mention that I finished MM on August 16th (and school started the 18th, and the 3-month marker was the 19th). It still needs to be edited, desperately. It'll be a hard, long job--I already had to re-read the whole damn thing to write down every single time I said time passed so that my timeline would be accurate. I should've written down other stuff while I was at it; now I need to write down major events and plot hooks to make sure that the events match up with the timeline and that I a) didn't leave any plot hooks undeveloped and b) didn't think I wrote something that I actually didn't. I also think I forgot to describe Lord Fausto and General Valerian, which is kind of dumb when you consider the fact that I've described absolutely everyone else of any import whatsoever (except perhaps the president). Gah... work. Right now I'd rather shirk work--homework, cleaning work, writing work, minimum wage Subway work--and play Radiata Stories, which I bought less than a week ago and am already more than halfway through. (I chose the non-human side. I know, I know, everyone says to go human the first time around--but I hate Cross, and Larks was being an idiot/jerk too, and I think Jack wanted to follow Ridley. I followed my heart... which for the first time led me away from bishies. I don't care if he is the head priest of the Olacion Order (not to mention made of polygons), Kain. Is. Hot. And I could tell Felix was a guy even before I talked to him... he's a super-bishie too, though his bish appeal is slightly lessened by the fact that he is regularly stalked... by other guys. I know I left the bishie humans behind me when I chose to follow Ridley, but hey, though they may not exactly be bishounen, Jack and Hyann are pretty cute too.)

8-15-08: School starts Monday. Ugh! I managed to salvage all I had lost of MM, and now it's close to finished. Which is a mercy, since I still want to finish it before school starts. Today I put up two short compositions. One is a character composition titled "Why." It was pouring rain, I was at work, and my co-worker hates me (seriously... my boss told him I said something about him that I didn't, and I don't think he believed me when I told him it wasn't true). I just had a thought running through my head: "Why do you hate me?" To be more specific, it went on to things like, "If you're going to hate me, at least hate me for me, instead of for what someone told you about me." But by the time I got home and got around to writing this, it was bright, sunny daytime, and my imagination took hold and created a character.

The other update is a short (very short) story titled "The Potion." It literally started out as a dream. Actually, as a webcomic within a dream. I found some webcomic--I have no idea what its title was--that had only five pages up. The art was cool, and I have a very clear visual in my head because of it, but I remember being pissed because I didn't know when the guy was going to update next (I think there was a message of some sort saying that he put the project on hold). The opening line of the story (I changed the number, so it would sound better at the end--I'll write the original line here), "The potion has worked a combined total of nine times," was a box in the upper-left-hand corner of the first panel on one of the pages (I think the third; the first two were kind of pointless and I don't remember them). So was the original version of the third line (originally it was the second, in the bottom-right-hand corner of the same panel): "And only on the day of death." I mostly just had a very clear visual and a vague idea what was going on. Miranda and this other guy, whose perspective it was in when I dreamed, were already clear; they already knew what was going to happen. Making it mostly this guy's (Ridley's) inner dialogue was something I came up with when I was awake. Unfortunately, as soon as I got up I had to take the car into the shop for a brake check and the shop is way south, so by the time I got to writing this much of my original dream had dissipated.

7-29-08: Lost 50 pages of Masks in Moonlight by being a complete moron Saturday. I spent 80 bucks on a program that'll hopefully help me recover the deleted file. The only downside is that it's been running for well over 48 hours and it still hasn't scanned all of my 150-gig hard drive. In update news, I wrote a (very) short character composition today, entitled "Time." It's not me, of course. It's one of the many nameless, faceless beings who live inside me. Sometimes I think there must be so many people inside me with so many stories to tell, so many tragedies and so many victories, so much defeat and hope and hate and love and despair and faith and life--sometimes I wonder if these writing moods I get into are the people inside me telling me their stories, and I the writer cannot help but listen and record. It's an interesting thought, if nothing else.

7-22-08: Haven't written any poetry in about a month, but I had a couple of poems that I wrote to insert into my story and forgot to post up here, so I just put up two poems by Carmen's and my character Tavi: "The Walls" and "The Sea." They both come into the story significantly, which is why they're on the themes they are. Speaking of Carmen's and my story (I think it's actually "Carmen and my story" like it would be "John and Jane's story" if they wrote it together, but that sounds weird with "my," so I don't know), Masks in Moonlight has officially surpassed all my other stories in length and it's only been a little over two months since I started writing it. I think my record for finishing a story (other than a short story) is at least eight months. MM is close to finishing and significantly longer already. I might crack 200 pages. Here's hoping.

5-31-08: Multi-part update. First is two new short story character compositions. The first ("Just That") is a random stream-of-consciousness thing that I honestly have no clue as to the inspiration of, though it seems kind of druggy to me (I swear I don't do drugs!). The second ("Resignation") is a pseudo-stream-of-consciousness type inspired by the thought of "resigning to quiet despair."

The other part of the update is, I wrote three (!) poems today. They're not like my usual style and this is unusually prolific, so rest assured I do have a reason. My best friend and I are writing a story together--technically I'm doing all the actual writing, but the ideas are both of ours and so are the main characters. One of these characters, Tavi, is an avid reader and writer of poetry, and we figured she'd be the love sonnet type. Thing is, we can't use other people's poetry for fear of either copyright infringement or people asking, "They have Shakespeare in Sillentra?". We thought it'd still be an interesting part of her character for her to quote old(-sounding) poetry, so I took it upon myself to create it. Thus, "One Moment" and "My Lady" are my first two forays into the world of iambic pentameter. (And I even use the Shakespearean sonnet form, with three quatrains and a couplet and the abab cdcd efef gg rhyme scheme.) "The Lover's Promise" was made for the quotability of the last two lines (for a time when the two main characters of the story, who fall in love, part for what they think is the last time--she quotes the lady's last line, thinking he has never read this poet, and then he, to her surprise, quotes the lover's reply).

I realize I probably didn't have to write out entire poems and could simply have made up random lines for her to quote. But see, though I may do--and prefer doing--a halfass job on a lot of things, writing is not one of them. I just had to write out the entire poems. (They're not all that long, anyway.) "The Lover's Promise" I thought was interesting rhythmically, because the lady and the lover use different meters, and the only stanza that is different from the others spoken by the same character is the very last one, and it's only a little different. I'd tell you exactly what I did, but I took that intro to lit class last fall, and I sold back the textbook, so I honestly don't remember.

5-13-08: A couple new poems up, Lost Under the Lights and Ash. They're kind of old, but apparently I forgot to post them. One was written while I was sick and my swollen ears made everything sound muffled (and therefore me feel completely isolated within myself), and the other one was inspired (yet again) by a song and written in the minutes before psychology class in my class notebook. Weird, I know.

3-28-08: No new content today, but a new layout, done entirely yesterday and today. I'm a bit conflicted. On my computer, the background is a peach kind of color (one of the colors I used to make the parchment). On my mom's, it's yellow. I don't know what it actually is! If it's yellow, I need to change it, but if it's peach, then I don't.

2-7-08: Four-poem update. To Live Is, A Diamond, Sunday Night Elegy, and Maybe It's Just Me. As a nice change of pace, those last two are actually written from my own perspective. Read the rants on each poem's page if you want to know about them.

12-18-07: I've written one poem and one short story since the last update. The poem was written in October and the short story was written today. I posted the poem, "Oh Lady Fair of Brokenness," but the short story can't be posted. See, in order to understand it, you have to have read my book The Magic Kingdom, which has to be read after Anathema Story. You can't read it by itself because it's the life story of a character in The Magic Kingdom and I don't bother defining terms or describing characters because I already did that in TMK. It's called "Ashley's Secret." I suppose you could try to read it out of context, but I'd have to send a myriad of notes along with it or you wouldn't understand a word. And it's a spoiler if you haven't read The Magic Kingdom but ever intend to. Like, it starts spoiling stuff from the very last chapter of TMK in the very first paragraph.

10-4-07: Updated with one new poem and one new short story. Both are on the same theme: forgiveness, or rather, those who seek it where it is not. Similar names, too: the poem is Forgiveness, and the short story is Forgive Me. Poem is modern, story is futuristic. Forgive Me is split into four (very short) acts; I just wanted a way to break up the scenes, and that's what I chose. (Sort of like Anton Chekhov's "The Lady With the Pet Dog," only much shorter and not having anything to do with adultery. And in English. And--okay, I just meant I broke it up with Roman numerals like Chekhov did in that one story.)

On a totally unrelated note, 1) I have a fever for the second time this semester already and 2) in 35 minutes it will be exactly one week 'til my birthday.

9-18-07: Updated again with one new poem. Unfortunately I think the title of it is too spoiling. I'm planning to read it to my friends without the title and see if they think I should change it. It's the one dated 9-15-07. I am a girl, of course, but I find the concept of brotherhood--not ordinary siblinghood, but true brotherhood in adversity--to be both fascinating and beautiful.

9-14-07: Updated with one new poem and one new short story character composition. The poem is called "Once Dreamed" and the cc is "Morning." Once Dreamed was loosely based off the lyrics of a song and Morning was a "what-if" piece. It had threefold inspiration: a short story-within-a-story in Jane Eyre, a what-if that hit me when I was watching Sense and Sensibility, and the ending of an old short story called "A Sorrowful Woman."

8-9-07: I've updated a few poems since my last official update on this page, but not many. (I was in a hurry every time, which is why I didn't say anything here.) I haven't been in much of a poetry-writing whatever this year. I've mostly been working on my stories--Anathema Story and its prequel The Magic Kingdom are finished (though TMK still needs more editing for typos, redundant adjectives, and the like), and AS' sequel, temporarily titled Magus Story, is over 10,000 words through. Also a fan fiction with the working title "What Love Is" for FFIX is underway, and it'll be a long one. And lastly right now I'm working on a story with the working title of "Worlds Apart."

This is what I posted today: four short prose practice character compositions from May of 2006 through today--Broken Spirit's Lament, The Scene, Lost (not the TV show, by any means; this was inspired by my favorite book, Dracula), and One to Another. The other update is a Final Fantasy VII fan fiction titled "Nothing More."

10-17-06: Four more poems updated today. "The Fallen" really isn't very good but it's just like "Never Give Up"--it's a story composition. The one I wrote today (like, fifteen minutes ago) is "Captive," a character composition for Aida Sinclaire, a character of mine in this story that's a prequel to Anathema Story. I haven't quite finished Anathema Story yet, and I know I shouldn't be thinking about a second book, but I can't help it, so I figured I'd just write some notes and make myself not start actually writing it until I finish AS (as my motivation, I guess). I still haven't named it. But I do have my main charries' names.

It's set a thousand years before Anathema Story in the ancient Magic Kingdom, which is, during this story, torn apart by civil war. Aida is the princess of the Loyalists, but her body is the "key" or "catalyst" for the whispered "final circle"--and so, though well treated, she's always been little more than a tool or object to everyone. She ends up meeting Shino Hamasaki, a Firebrand (that's what the Revolutionaries call themselves) who's only a Firebrand because one of their top generals took him in. He's always been an outcast, because he sucks at magic. Torrin, Chase, and Mina have roles in this story but I'm going to ignore them for now and just sum it up by, Aida is fascinated by the way Shino treats her (as a normal person and an equal, because that's how he always wanted to be treated), sticks around him, and they end up falling in love. Anyway, go, read the poems, I should shut up now, bye.

7-6-06: Another update today. I'd stop to say more but I'm in a hurry.

5-30-06: Abortion has always been a major issue for me, even when I was a child. So I decided it deserved more than a puny eight-liner. My latest poem, "The Holocaust of Today," is about exactly that--the American holocaust that has gone almost unchallenged. There are groups like the National Right to Life and the Justice House of Prayer, yes, but the majority of Americans are silent about this, and just go on day to day like nothing's happening. For me, abortion is an issue of right and wrong--absolute right and wrong, because relativism just doesn't work. I don't like babies. They scream and poop and drool way too much. But anyone will look at a one-year-old and affirm s/he is a person. How is it any different before s/he is born? What is it about the act of being born that makes the baby, human? It is not our place to decide when the defining line of humanity is drawn. Now that the courts have taken it upon themselves to define human life, it is not long before it is drawn out to mean any child under say, ten... or anyone who can't care for himself... or the terminally ill... it sounds ridiculous, doesn't it? But partial-birth abortion sounded ridiculous once, too.

5-16-06: Posted two new poems today: "My Little World of Flowers" and "The Dream". I wrote "The Dream" today and the other one April 23. I was SO depressed when I wrote "My Little World of Flowers". Arguably more depressed than I have ever been in my life. My parents were arguing over something petty and I was seriously scared they were going to break up. The 'adult world' is cruel and uncaring... it does not pay heed to the children caught in the crossfire.

Plus I was PMSing, but uhh, that's not my point. It's the only poem I have ever written where I actually mention God--cry out, really. It's an interesting point that this one time was when I was extremely worried and frightened and not thinking quite straight. I really didn't think about it (which is why the rhyming is so awful). I guess it's a good thing to know that when I am really scared and obviously can't turn to my parents... I turn to my Daddy God.

4-21-06: I wrote my latest poem, The Dance of Time, on the 14th. And I haven't even watched Endless Waltz recently. So HA! I've just seen it so many times that Mariemaia's line is still in my head sometimes, completely out of the blue. After all, those who do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it. I paraphrased that quote in the poem for the sake of rhyme and rhythm.
"History is much like an endless waltz. The three beats of war, peace and revolution continue on forever."
-Mariemaia Khushrenada

3-28-06: I just posted my very first fan fiction story!!! It's under Short Stories. It's an FFX fan fiction :) I love fan fiction, but only when it's well written and reasonable. For example, I hate it when people write fan fiction and add original characters as the leads. I just don't like it. Especially when those original characters are obscenely powerful or get the girl or guy that the main character liked. That just pisses me off. Fics like that are better off not written. For crying out loud, if you want your own character as the lead, just write an original story! But I do like well-written stories, even if they kill off the main character. I am referencing one FFIX fanfic I read, but even though it killed off Zidane, it had a very believable reason for it. However, I am not really very good at writing, so the only place I'll dare attempt to publish my own writings is here! But, for an introspective Yuna, I think it's pretty good. There's a text file available for downloading on the page with the fanfic on it if it's too hard to read off the site.
The fic is called "The Pieces of Her Heart". Poor Yuna. STBY.

My main idea doing it was false hope. At the end of Final Fantasy X-2, Yuna says, " 'We had no choice.' Our magic words. We repeat them to ourselves over and over again but you know what? The magic never worked. All we're left with is regret." Instead of going the "magic never worked" route Yuna did in X-2, I decided to make my point, "but we always had a choice."

3-7-06: I really have no idea what I'm going to do with my life... I'm still a junior in high school, but I have a bad habit of looking towards the uncertain future and worrying. There are a few options I have for myself, most of which are only possible if I dream really, REALLY big (and grow a lot more talent and get a lot of miracles). Writer, artist, poet, actress, singer, graphic designer, computer programmer, web designer, graphic designer, secretary, editor, or English teacher. And here are the downsides for all of these.

I am not a good enough writer to make anything out of that. Nor am I a good enough artist, and even if I was, they don't make any money. Poets don't make any money either, I'm not very good at it, and poets have an average life expectancy of under 40. I am not that good an actress, and I don't have looks to make up for it, there are plenty of actors and actresses both better at acting and more attractive than me who couldn't make it. I actually am a good singer as long as you don't ask me to sing really high opera notes; but that's also nearly impossible to get into, and I can't write music. I suppose I could be a graphic designer, if I was taught, but there are already more graphic designers than there are clients. I am not smart enough to be a computer programmer and furthermore the entry-level jobs in the field are zilch. I'd love to be a web designer but nobody can freakin' teach me flash!!! Mom was the one who said I should be a secretary because I type fast. I don't know how the heck I'd do that, and besides, I hate calling people on the phone. Being an editor might be cool, but I imagine that's hard to become, even though I'm pretty good at spotting other people's spelling and grammatical errors (though with my own, I'm... not so good). And mom thinks I could be an English teacher, but my God, I never want to diagram another sentence as long as I live. I may be good at it but that doesn't mean I like it! ...Plus I hate kids. Yes, I realize I am one. People my age are punks and twerps and pre-pubescent kids tend to dislike me.

So here I am, I can think of absolutely nothing to make of myself. At which my stupid 30-year-old curriculum would say, "be a homemaker!" But I also have no interest in getting married or having children. Ta-da. I will likely grow up and bum off my parents 'til I'm 30. At least. Egad, this sucks. I suck.

2-28-06: I wrote "Broken Wings" yesterday, and just posted it today. It was inspired by the Trinity Blood closing theme, also titled "Broken Wings." I love deep lines. I'm not exactly sure how to describe them, aside from, "deep". The first two lines of the chorus of that song go, "My broken wings--still strong enough to cross the ocean with." I love that kind of line. You know, it's like, I'm broken, it doesn't seem like I can go on--but I still have enough strength in me to continue. I'm not giving up. I love stuff like that. And since I have a tendency to think in images and cool phrases (stuff like "paint for me a portrait of pain"), it suits me perfectly.

2-22-06: Two days ago I wrote "Requiem," and just got around to posting it today. You know, I've been meaning to write a poem called Requiem for a while. Though originally I was going to call it "Blood" (until I realized it'd be a stupid poem unless I went all vampire, but I already do that a lot). Common themes when I write poetry include: fate (the biggie!), lines that imply vampires, an eve in December, and requiems. I've always had a fascination with the word "requiem". Don't I sound like such a happy person??

1-27-06: It's been quite a while since I've posted any poetry, and even longer since I last wrote any. But it's true... I do wish I could paint a portrait of pain... ugh, I'm nuts. I and my latest work are what you get when you mix artist, writer, actress, psychology-lover and hormonal teenager in a dark room and sprinkle on a little free time.

10-6-05: Six days 'til my birthday. I put up a copyright notice underneath my poetry and finished the Contact page with two emails, my instant messengers and a few little bio things.

10-5-05: One week 'til my birthday, exactly! Though it's only forty minutes 'till six days. I need to go to bed. But I finished the poetry section (finally). Everything else will have to wait. I am dead tired. G'night.