ROW80, Characters Reacting to the Paranormal, Pottermore, and Dr Seuss Art

h hello. I had a deadline today, didn't I?

Promised to have all the on-screen edits of Druid's Moon completed. (Also blog comments and advance A-Z posts to catch up on, plus a couple of writing projects...)

So what have I been doing? Not sure... I have been editing, just not devoting as much time to it as I should. Yes, despite the schedule. I'm thinking that something has to go...

I enjoy Twitter quite a lot, and have gotten used to not checking every minute of it now that I'm following so many more people than when I started. I thought about blogging only once a week, but I like blogging! And I love interacting with all of you. It's nice to have a forum for longer, more elaborate discussions and thoughts.

Speaking of forums, I'm still active in the Compuserve Books and Writers Community. We've been having some great monthly writing exercises lately.

All in all, I'm thinking it's got to be Facebook that I drop... I've already fallen out of the Pinterest habit, and I love tumblr but it's easy to explore that in half-hour spurts once a month. Actually, speaking of tumblr, Maureen Johnson has been posting each day leading up to her book release and she had an interesting post the other day about extending the moment of surprise in a book featuring ghoulies and ghosties and other things that go bump in the night:

"I tried to have that realization roll over [the main character] a few times. I wanted to extend her acceptance curve a bit. I wanted there to be a bit more, 'Wait, what? Ghosts? WHAT?' What happens to her mind when the initial shock wears off?"

I agree with this idea a lot. Druid's Moon is my first paranormal, but I also had Austin going back in time in my MG The Face of a Lion, and in both stories the characters responded with a little more "what's going on?!" than "oh, paranormal/fantasy stuff. cool."

Each in their own way, of course. Austin, after his initial surprise, is eager to follow Kedi. Lyne, on the other hand... she doesn't want to be responsible for rescuing Fred, and she resents being thrown into the role of Beauty. Especially since he knows so much about the legend/curse, and she was never told a thing from her mother, about the tradition that's been passed down her family.

Back to the Facebook issue. It's got to go. Not least because, beyond the usual to do lists and hobbies and reading and interests, there are longer term projects I've got to make time for (like replacing ALL the copyrighted photos in my oldest blog posts with Creative Commons ones. Like maybe adding tags to all those blog posts (would you believe I have never tagged a single blog post?!). Like adding new tabs to the blog. Like updating the catalogue of my library. And - oh, my brain hurts... I wish I was one of those people that could get by on five or six hours of sleep).

I've already stopped playing Farmville, and I'd gotten to the point where I had about 50 of my 500+ friends labelled as close friends - did you know that if you do that, FB will send that person's updates to your email? All I have to do is scroll through my email, and only sign in to FB if I feel like replying to a particular post. Now I've whittled the list down to about 30 people, and most of those don't post very often. Still, sometimes I feel badly that I'm missing out on stuff from other friends and family members. And let's not even get into Google+...

Or Pottermore!

Has anyone else tried to play this? I'm halfway through Book 2 at the moment, and while it's lots of fun, I certainly do not have time to devote to it. If you haven't played, it's basically an interactive journey through every chapter of every Harry Potter book. The best part, of course, is coming across the occasional original tidbit that J. K. Rowling wrote specifically for the site. I love finding out new facts and backstory about the characters.

I signed up for my first-ever movie-related blogfest!

Hosted by ninja captain Alex! Hope to see you all there!

Also, did anyone else know about this? Apparently, Dr Seuss had other art. Secret art, that he shared only with his family but wanted the public to see after he'd passed away. And now prints of it are for sale...

Love the lions strolling through the top one...

I especially want that wave... (please ignore the non-edited screenshot with scroll bars visible)

And this one is for Claire Legrand! I'd like a copy too...

Which Dr Seuss art do you like?