So I have a couple of projects that have been on the backburner since, well, since I started college. These are, in no particular order:

1. “The Cerulean Empress,”
2. “Moraya Koshka,”
3. Jake Morrigan’s story;

rewrites of

1. “What to do with a Gun,”
2. “The Journal of Brian Ezhno,”
3. “The Witches’ Railroad,”

and in 2010 I have to finish or scrap “Beneath the Black Rainbow.” I really need to get to work, unfortunately I left most of my writing materials back in my dorm room., and when I’m back there, well, you know… there’s school work.

With The Cerulean Empress, I’m stuck on this whole wedding thing. Well, the affair too; I’ve never been to a wedding, never had sex, never even experienced the desire to do either of those things. It’ll be hard to translate something I’ve only experienced secondhand, basically from one medium to another.

With Moraya Koshka, I’m just… all out of ideas. It’s really hard to come by historical information from the 1820’s specifically, specifically about sailing conditions. I’ve taken a good many liberties with the history already, I want it to be as accurate as I can possibly make my story. When I get back to campus I’ll probably check the library for some books on that time period. They have to have something, maybe even about Russia.

For Jake Morrigan, I’m stuck on the Madlaina angle; I’m not sure she even fits in the plot anymore, except that I don’t feel like I can leave part six out of the story altogether. I’m still not sure what to do about the title, either. It’s so lame. I might call it Sarabi, but that’s still pretty uncreative.

As far as rewriting, that’s just a hassle.

My friend Shawna was supposed to drive her friend Rae, myself, and my friend Tyler back home on Tuesday for Christmas break (December 17, 2008). The weather was bad, so we were going to wait until Wednesday morning; but around 10:00 Tuesday night, she texted me to call her ASAP. When I did, she told me that there was an emergency in her family, and that there would be no room for any of us in her car. After she and I got off the phone I called my mom, and she could really only come up with a plan to come get us on Thursday. Yesterday she wouldn’t have had anybody else to share the drive with (I don’t drive on the highway; only done it once), and she and my sister were going to drive out to get us today. But…

Yesterday morning at 9:00 am I was awoken by my cell phone. It was my friend Tyler calling, telling me his mom had found a bus scheduled to leave from Huntington for Hagerstown at 10:30 am. So I frantically got my shit together, which meant re-ordering three bags and only packing three pairs of clothing, and ran out the door. We went to Burger King to get some sad excuse for breakfast, then walked the so many blocks to the Greyhound station. We got our tickets at 10:00, got on the bus and left at 10:30 on the way to Columbus, Ohio.

We got to Columbus at 2:15 or so, and our bus from Columbus to Pittsburgh, PA left at 2:30. Unfortunately, the first bus filled up, so we waited until 3:00 for a second one. We had time for snacks and a potty break, but that was about it. In the line in front of us (there were about seven people waiting for the second PA bus) was this Hispanic guy talking to a black guy about how he had been on the buses since Saturday morning; he was coming up to Ohio from near the Mexican border in Texas, and he’d had a bus freeze and not start, one of his bags was lost, and he was about ten hours behind schedule. I made it a point to tell Tyler it could be THAT much worse, since he was so pessimistic about the whole trip. It was then, also, that I realized to my chagrin that I was finally part of the holiday travel rush. But it was kind of an “included” feeling, too. Kind of a guilty pleasure of being mainstream, I guess. : P

The ride from Columbus to Pitt was supposed to go until about 6:15 or something. We stopped at a Shenandoah Plaza in Cambridge, Ohio to let people off and for food and the bathroom, and I got a mini pineapple pie. It was surprisingly good! The two guys I had been listening to at the bus station had a manly hug before they parted ways, since this was the Hispanic guy’s stop. It was pretty endearing really; those unexpected, on-the-road friendships are really the most amazing thing a person can experience, I think.

It felt like we were in Ohio FOREVER. We were half an hour behind schedule, but we still made it to Pittsburgh in time for our last bus from Pittsburgh to Hagerstown. The Pittsburgh stop was supposed to be about 55 minutes. I got some hot chocolate and Tyler got a sandwich or something, and some pop and iced tea. The station was really nice. Then our bus was supposed to be half an hour to an hour late because of traffic. So we got on the bus around 8:00 and were in Hagerstown around 11:30.

Tyler’s mom came and picked us up from the podunk Greyhound station in Hagerstown, MD, behind a McDonald’s that was closed except for the drive-thru. When they got there it was almost midnight, and as soon as we got in his mom’s van trouble started between Tyler and his mom and stepdad. His stepdad actually pulled the car onto the side of the road and told Tyler if he kept being rude they would kick him out of the car. I, not wanting to get kicked out of the car & ruin my surprise for my mom, said nothing, although Tyler did have reason to be hostile and his mom had missed a lot of the plans he and I had discussed the day before. (My mom was going to take him home; she would have had to do nothing, as she claimed she would have had to take the day off etc. etc. if we hadn’t taken the bus.. oi! but whatever, not my mom.)

I got home around midnight, and called Mom from the doorstep. I said, “Hey mom, guess what!” And after Mom asked what, I said, “Come open the door and let me in.”

“No way! Really??”

“Mom, please. It’s cold out.”

So mom came and opened the door, and the van pulled out of the driveway. She gave me a nice long hug and I kind of hope Tyler and/or at least his mom saw that and would emulate, for the love of god. Anyway, so when I got inside, we were all ecstatic. In retrospect, I would have loved some more time to plan my packing… but I don’t regret going. It was definitely an adventure, one that if I repeat… well, for one, I’m doing it solo!

As I’m wrapping up Maps to Imaginary Places, yes, I am already contemplating the title of my next poetry collection. It’ll be more than a year off, since I’m not prolific enough to write 32+ pages of poetry in a year (I don’t think I’ve even done that in two years; it would probably take three), but I’m already feeling anticipatory excitement. I also think it would be cool to publish a collection of essays and whatnot that I’ve written for school, and if I ever write any just for the sake of having written one (now that I’ve found I love writing essays!). But my next poetry collection will probably be called Quaint & Cool, and I probably won’t be able to write a poem for that title, ha ha.

Creative endeavors aside, my first semester of college is coming to a close in the next week. I have my first exam tomorrow, and my last on Tuesday. Tomorrow is the journalism exam, which shouldn’t be too big of a problem; I could probably get a 0 on it (not going to happen) and still have an A. Monday is my communications exam, which I’ll actually have to do decently on I think; and Tuesday I have biology, which is going to be the hardest or at least most stressful exam. After that I get to sell my textbooks back, if I don’t start tomorrow with my English text, and I can… well, start buying next semester’s. Joy. Next semester will be a blast; I’m taking 18 credit hours: marketing [231], psych [201], Spanish [112] (which is 101+102), info gathering & research [JMC102], accounting [215], and theater [112] appreciation. I’m kind of looking forward to Spanish and psychology, the rest not so much. I’m going  to probably spend $400-$500 on books next semester too. Siighh.

During the couple weeks between semesters, I’m hopefully going to get into gear with my writing projects. The sooner I finish The Cerulean Empress the sooner I can revise and actually finish it; and the sooner I finish it, the sooner I can Lulu it. I’ll be wrapping up the loose ends from Maps, buying the preview copy, and then notifying everyone who said they were interested in buying a copy that it’s up for sale when it is. After that I’ll have to start my letter-writing campaign to local (both Martinsburg and Huntington) bookstores and libraries asking them to carry my book. Now that I think about publishers buying shelf space at bookstores, my campaign probably will not go well; but Maps will be put on Amazon.com by Lulu anyway, I think, so it’s not too bad. And still, I do have the libraries! Anyway, once I have the book out there, I could possibly pitch it to an agent[s] and actually get a publishing house to carry my poetry book. I do, after all, have publication credentials anyway.

I’m really excited by the prospects of everything. The only thing I’m not excited about is having to work at the radio station on campus next semester, when I want to work in television.

xoxo,

la reina de los cactus