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Hey all!
It’s me, your neighborhood not-so-friendly Jen! I figured I haven’t done a more personal blog recently, so I thought it was time to update you guys! Cause you guys are the best readers ever.
So, some exciting things. I’ve been working a lot. I work at a little store called The British Pedlar. We sell imported British food, candy, and gifts. I like it. I get to work on WatL stuff all day and eat yummy candy. I’m slowly but surely trying everything. My favorite is the Mr. Kipling Mini Battenbergs. They’re soooo good! They are little squares of sponge cake with apricot filling wrapped in marzipan covered in sugar. I wasn’t sure I would like them, now I’m addicted. I also really liked the Cadbury Twirls. If anyone in our readerverse has tried the Cadbury Flake bar, this is basically a Flake covered in more chocolate. For those who don’t know what a Flake is, it’s a very crumbly chocolate bar. It’s really good. You should try it. Anyway, work is fun.
I love being able to work on my MacBook Pro. I feel like a real writer! I’ve got it all loaded up with awesome programs such as Calibre (see my review of that awesome program here), Word, Kindle, and iBooks. I also have Adobe Creative Cloud, which has Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, and others. My new desktop iMac also has these programs, as I use them so often. I do all of the Quotes of the Week in Photoshop using images marked “for non-commercial use with modification” on Google Images. I love playing around with Photoshop. I added the text to our story “Uncovering the Phantom” in Photoshop.
Oh! Speaking of “Uncovering the Phantom!” The cover is finally finished. I had been looking through Google Images for the perfect picture and I stumbled on this one Etsy seller who had these amazing pictures of women in Victorian dresses that she made. I consulted with K. Leigh and Cym to see if they liked the photos, then immediately messaged the seller. She said that we could use her image, even modified, as long as we give credit. So, next came the task of finding someone to edit it. I had asked some friends to do it, but they got too busy to finish. So I asked my fiance James if he could edit it, and boy does it look nice! I can’t wait for you guys to see it, but it’ll probably be after the fourth part of the story since it pertains to a plot twist.
Now, we hope to publish the first part of the story soon. I have just finished writing the next part of the story, which contains the twist. We really hope you like what we’ve done with our Round Robin writing. It’s interesting to do since you never know what the other writers are going to do with what you’ve written. We have done it a little bit differently, as we have done a slight outline so that we know where the story was going. However, all of the details are all Round Robin-ed. You guys should like it. If you’re a Phantom fan, you should love it.
One thing that I am excited about is coming up on the 23rd-25th. It’s called Pensacon, which is the shortened version of Pensacola Comicon. The past two years I have volunteered as a Celebrity Handler, which is the most awesome job ever. Basically, I get to sit with a celebrity for the entire time I am working. I take the money from the customers and take photographs of the celeb with the customer. I got put on this team because I cannot stand for a long period of time due to my knee problems, but I absolutely love it! The first year I got to sit with Maximiliano Hernandez, who played Agent Jasper Sitwell in the Marvel-verse. He was awesome and insisted on signing everything I had for nothing. He was so incredibly nice. The second year I wanted to sit with Sean Maher, who played Simon Tam on Firefly/Serenity. However, since he was only going to be there two days and I volunteered for 3, they asked who else I would like to sit with. I threw out Sylvester McCoy, figuring that he was taken but it didn’t hurt to try. I was lucky and they sat me with him. If you’re not familiar with him, he played the 7th Doctor on “Doctor Who.” I was worried because he didn’t seem to want to be there, but it turned out he was just jet lagged and he turned out to be the sweetest man! He signed a picture for me for nothing. This year I’m crossing my fingers to sit with Dacre Stoker. Now, that name may sound familiar because he’s the great-grandnephew of Bram Stoker, who wrote “Dracula.” Yes, that Dracula. As an English/Writing Arts graduate, I have a deep need to sit and talk with this man. Not only because of his relatives but because he, too, has written his own Dracula novel, titled “Dracula the Un-Dead.” So yeah, here’s hoping. Cross your fingers for me!
Now that I’ve rambled on for what seems like forever, I suppose I should stop. Keep a lookout for the first installment of “Uncovering the Phantom,” as that should be up soon!
-Jen
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