The difficulties of writing and working full time

Hello all!
As you have probably guessed from the title, the main reason you haven't seen a lot of updates to either my website or my blog recently is due to a lack of time. The clock keeps ticking, no matter how much you wish it would stop, at least for a little while.
But yes, to the topic at hand.
Writing while working is a difficult beast. I currently work at a bookstore. It is a fantastic place that spurs me to want to write more. I get ideas. Lots and lots and lots of them. They crowd my head, spill onto the floor, and then sit up and stare at me, all saying, "Write me, write me!"
For anyone who has known me for a while, I tend to come up with way more stories than I could ever write in any period of time. I have stacks of notebooks, tons of simple story ideas, and yet, only one really completed draft. A draft that is not the book I want to finish.
Because, yes, I went back to working on Resonance. Why, you ask, when you finally decided to go with the Triskai Project? Why go back to Resonance, the novel you've fought with for the last three years?
Because, dear reader, it called me back. Honestly, I opened up my old web document when I was in the middle of a tough part of Vicious Sun, and started to get inspired. You know that feeling, the one that tells you to get off your butt and go do something? Bake a cake, read a book, fly a kite, that kind of stuff. Stuff you can't do every day.
And it hit me. I suddenly knew where I wanted the story to go. Because, as most of you don't know, I hit a couple of huge plot issues. I made the story too complicated. It was getting worse and worse, like a wound bleeding out and I couldn't manage to find a decent heal spell. I ran away for a while to play with Vicious Sun. I won NaNoWriMo with 55,555 words this year, beating last year's score by over 5,000. And I felt that bite of inspiration. I could do it.
And I can do it. I just hit 23 pages on the tenth *gulp* draft of the first section of Resonance. The story is divided into four parts, which means I have just about fifty pages in double space terms. That is enough for me to start sending out snippets to agents. Before then, I do have a pool of readers to tell me if I did write anything horrible, or type things backwards (yep, I have a habit of doing that), along with planning to send it into critters.org, a site where you can critique and get critiques on your stories.
Fortunately, I do get an hour long lunch where I work, which is about enough time for me to write a page or two on my tenth draft, which is a bonus I didn't have before. I also have insurance now that I'm full time, which is really good considering my ability to randomly injure myself/get pneumonia/bronchitis and stuff.
In other news, still trying to figure out a budget for a computer. Mine can no longer handle music and video without frying. Which means no art programs for more than an hour at a stretch. Tis sad, but at least I can still work on MS Word.
Trying to stay warm, and keeping fingers crossed for no snow,
Tania

What's Up???

Well, long time no post! We're into December, meaning that NaNoWriMo has been and gone. I succeeded with 55,555 words, beating last year's 50,059 words.
So, what am I working on now? Resonance.
Yep, that's right. I went back to Resonance, the story that has been kicking my butt for years due to too convoluted of a plot line. I've gone back to the beginning, and am reworking the introduction. Yet again. For the ninth time. I think...
So anyhow, just a quick update to let the world know I'm still alive, and still working.

Secret Project

Some of you are wondering about this "secret project" of mine. Sorry folks, you'll have to wait a while to find out what it is!
In other news, not too much is going on. Mainly a blog post to prove that I'm still alive and active.
That's really all for now...
I suppose.

Job hunting and a website overhaul

I'm pretty surprised with mother nature this year. Not only did we end up staying in the fifties almost the entire month of May, but now that we're into July, we can't seem to get out of the nineties! A bit of an odd change in such a short period of time... at least we can't complain about the lack of storms this year.

So, as many of you have probably heard, I'm on the hunt for a job, and to help with that I am finishing my website, taniarichter.com. I've got a decent amount of work to do on it, mainly writing the content for the novels in progress, getting my pdf resume up there, and sprucing it up a bit more. 

Woo...

More soon...

Okay, about this whole "sparkle-wolf" deal...

I like wolves.
This is a well and commonly known fact. I've been writing about winged wolves since I was in sixth grade.
However, in most cases, they still have the typical anatomy and coloration of wolves. You don't see bright green wolves with emo tattoos and piercings running around in my books.
But they are invading. Everywhere I look in the younger generation (what am I saying, I'm only 23!), sparkle-wolves, emo-wolves, wolves that are representations of our souls are appearing.
And that makes me very sad. Because of this, people are starting to view wolves in a bad light. Oh, look, someone else who put wings on wolves. How original. Look, there is another wolf character. Great.
This is the response that people are having to this sudden outburst that everyone was a wolf in a past life, everyone's soul is represented by a wolf, la de da de da. Forgive this rant, but seriously, there are plenty of awesome creatures out there. I think that Twilight may have a bit to do with this phenomena (Sparkle-wolves, sparklepires, same difference) but I also think that hive-mind is rearing its head with the youth of the world.
Seriously, explore other animals. Wolves are great (as previously stated, I really like them). However, they are not the only animals in the world. There are plenty of other great creatures.

Advancing

So, it has been a while since I posted. This would mostly be due to graduation and wrapping everything up. Now, though I am finally graduated, and in the middle of unpacking all of my stuff.


Over the next few weeks, I get to work on Resonance.
Scrap that.

Starting this week, I'm working on Resonance as much as I can, diving face first into the story. First order of business is to finish typing the last couple of pages of what I have handwritten. Getting that out of the way, I will move on to the "cheat sheet" which will contain all of the character biographies, Spirit Shadow information, world maps, languages, and the ever important where-the-hell-am-I timeline sheet. Because even I keep getting lost, hehe.

Don't worry, I'll get it worked out so that it will only be at Inception level of having to read through the book 2-3 times to fully figure it out.

In other news, the move went well. We are in quite desperate need of another bookshelf, as mine is not enough for all of my books, let alone the combined might of mine and Andy's books. There are still approximately 6 boxes of books in need of a bookshelf, and that is most of the rest of what I have to unpack.

The critters all made the trip well and have settled in comfortably, except I'm having issues finding poor Kana's food in the Cities. Anyone know anyplace that actually sells Arugula? And I swear, the geckos are quite insane, they were all in happy colors by the end of the 2 hour car ride here.

Also, my computer is starting to go, meaning that the graphics card is overheating any time I try to do anything more advanced than playing a flash game :(

In an effort to get enough money to buy a new one while still being able to pay for other expenses (such as student loans), I am making and selling custom hats. This link - http://aetherfang.deviantart.com/#/d3izcx4  is my flagship hat, the tri-color double knit wolf hat. Pricey, because they take freaking forever to do. Awesome, because, well, it is awesome.
This is a regular hat, which can be done in any color you want -http://aetherfang.deviantart.com/art/Neon-Pink-Fox-Hat-213281986. Not nearly as pricey but still awesome.

Still working on a dragon hood, and then I get to dive into my custom dyed batch of glow-in-the-dark yarn. Still not fully waterproof, but this is the first test batch so I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. Going to pick up some more glow paint this week and try dying another batch this weekend.

Erm, I think that is it for now.
Time to go work on Resonance and finish a hat.

Neisti'Kegawa

Well, hello all my readers! It has been a while since the last post, now hasn't it? For that I do apologize, last semester of college and all that jazz. However, I figured that I should actually give you all an update.
First off, Resonance is not dead. It is on hiatus until I graduate and actually have the time to go over everything and make sure that there are no plot holes and that sort of deal. The final date that I have to have a working rough draft of it is June 30th so I can get my free proof copy from winning NaNoWriMo.
Second, I'm starting to do actual freelance web design, which is making me a bit busier, as I am now working somewhere around 4 part time jobs if you include being a student as a job. I am also in the middle of redesigning my two personal websites, as I managed to pick up taniarichter.com for my book stuff and also aetherfangdesign.com for my freelance work. There is nothing there, so don't bother visiting it just yet! I'll be sure to post an update when that time comes.
And last but not least, I am working on a bit of a project for one of my classes. If you were wondering where the title for this blog post came from, wonder no more! Neisti'Kegawa, or Dragons of the Vicious Sun, is worldbuilding and species building exercise that began from a dragonology contest on DeviantArt. I have about two weeks left to finish at least the basics, so I will be posting more information on that soon.
Sorry for the short post, but I should have been in bed over an hour ago... lots to do tomorrow!

Finally, an update!

Well, now that my final semester of school is just around the corner, I figured I should probably update my poor ignored blog and website.

So, over the last few weeks, I've been working on getting Resonance panned out. The next week and a half are crunch time (kinda like a NaNo redux!) with finishing things up. I will hopefully have the finished first draft done by January 31st, as long as things keep going well and I don't hit a huge brick wall with the story. I will probably still have some plot things to work out, but hey, a rough draft is meant to be rough, the polishing can come later.
I am also starting to work on a few images for the story, I would really like to publish it with images. I'll start posting some hopefully soon, I haven't decided exactly what I'm going for with some of them, and others are just taking an eternity to finish.

In other news, I have a possible mail thief that apparently likes taking my checks, even though there is no way they would be able to cash an Xcel Energy check. Still, having to keep cancelling checks is by no means how I want to spend my money, so I'm going to cross my fingers and hope that Xcel is just being slow in cashing their payments.

Been doing quite a few hats recently, lots of fun commissions, and looking forward to doing some more so I can hopefully get my Etsy store off the ground.
Also starting to get a few web design jobs, yay, and will be a teacher's assistant for CS 318, the first of the web design classes, also yay! This semester looks like it will be busy (when is it ever not?) but hey, for a last semester it could be much worse.

Although, it would be nice if we had a bit better weather...