Maybe this is already widespread knowledge among Firefly fans, and I'm out of the loop, but it's funny the things you can discover by researching civl war era clothing.

For instance, I'm looking up ruffles, and what comes up, but Scarlett O'Hara's famous "ruffle gown". ( Cut for pics! )

So, we watched a bunch of the special features last night, and about 3/4ths of the deleted scenes( (cut for spoilers) )

I went a little crazy making ruffles last night, but I decided to deck out my jacket with them, both because it really makes it cute, and because ruffles were very period for the time.

My jacket is done except for one sleeve, and a bit of trim I'm going to add around the front. It is so adorable!

Here's another crappy cell phone pic, of the back:

( Pic! )

I promise, better pics when the entire costume is done. I finished my skirt last night, and now it's down to the jacket sleeve, my corset, and a white shirt if I have time. By Friday night. No problem! I'll be working on the corset tonight, while watching NCIS and NCIS: LA.

Update on the Etsy sale: So far, there are only two entries to win the custom pendant or ring by me - one from a sale, and one from a blog mention. That's 50/50 odds for those entrants at the moment!

I haven't talked about it at all, but I'm making an 1860's gown to go caroling in.

I haven't sung since high school. *tries not to panic*

Anyway. We're going to be in a Christmas parade the day after Thanksgiving, and then go caroling on December 12th. Charles Dickens era costume, about half done right now.

Same basic era as civil war, btw, just different fabric choices, for the most part.

So, big bell skirt, fitted jacket top, corset, etc.

My jacket is done except for trim. My skirt is three quarters done, and I have to make my corset yet. Yikes!

However, I finally figured out how to make quick and easy ruffles with my serger! Super fast, compared to gathering by hand. Especially when one is talking about over 30 yards of ruffle!

( Pic )

Today is the first day of my Etsy shop's Christmas Sale!

Don't forget:

~ don't pay until I send you an adjusted invoice. If you want to know how much something will be, everything is 30% off the current listed price! EVERYTHING.

~ every $20 gets you an entry into the drawing for a custom made piece by me, just for you.

~ every mention + link in you journal gets you an entry into the drawing. There is no limit to the number of entries a single person can have!

~ The sale goes through Saturday at midnight, and the drawing will be held Sunday, with the winner annouced Monday.

jackiekessler answers questions people have about the Harlequin bruhaha and everyone's response to it. In case any of those questions might be your questions.

Kudos to the Mystery Writers of America, and the Science Fiction Writers of America for both following in the RWA's footsteps, here. While I'm sure Harlequin is most affected by the RWA's response, the show of solidarity is nice.

I feel bad for all the Harlequin authors out there. What must they be feeling about their publisher right now? Confused, hurt, angry? I'm sure the response of the publishing world is very dismaying as well. The way I see it, RWA and others didn't have a choice.

And no, Harlequin removing their name from the imprint isn't nearly enough. Read Jackie's excellent post if you wonder why.

Thank. God.

I am past that stupid block the book was giving me. The problem, as is so often the case, was not what I thought.

But now, the words, they flow.

I give you a celebratory snippet.

( ~snippet~ )

I was going to comment on the Harlequin self publishing vanity press bruhaha, but Jackie Kessler says everything I could have/would have, and so much more.

The upshot: money should always flow toward an author for having your work published, not away.

Out of all the seasons, this is the first time I've loved the top 2 girls equally. Whoever wins tonight, I'm thrilled for one, and sad for the other.

We're fifteen minutes from the end. and I think it's pretty cool they brought back the "top five" of the season to walk the runway. That experience will no doubt help the top four (who don't win the coveted top spot) pursue their own modeling careers.

Hmm. Laura, Nicole, Laura, Nicole. Tough choice! I do not envy the judges this time out!

ETA: I should add, Nicole seems more high fashion to me, while Laura seems more cover girl - although, wow, watching them walk...hmm. Both girls have come so far! Why can't they both win??

Okay, I feel like Laura just barely edged out over Nicole in that runway. Wow. *bites nails*

Because honestly, this stuff has to be the best written game dialogue EVER.

( *Click* )

I mentioned awhile ago, I'd be organizing a Christmas shopping sale for my Etsy store, and this is the official announcement with the details.

Next week, for the week of Thanksgiving only, I'll be offering an unprecendented 30% off marked prices on everything in my store, including already marked sale and clearance items. Starting Sunday, November 22, and running through Saturday, November 28th, just make a purchase as normal, but wait to pay with paypal until I send you an adjusted invoice, taking into account the 30% off.

In addition to that, I'll be holding a drawing for a custom made piece by me, featuring an absolutely gorgeous rainbow moonstone cabochon:



Beautiful blue flash, a generous 14x10mm size, and hand forged into either a pendant or a ring, winner's choice. Keep it, give it as a Christmas gift, or do your Christmas shopping in the store, and keep the moonstone piece for you (if you're the winner...)

Entries into the drawing are as follows:

~ mention my sale on your journal, and recieve an entry - see? No purchase necessary! The trick - you need to provide a link to my Etsy store, and then comment here linking me back to your post, so I know to enter you.

~ Spend $20 or less (not including shipping) and receive two entries into the drawing. For every $20 increment above that, receive two entries. So, for example:

Jane Smith buys a pair of earrings for $15 - she receives two entries into the hat. She mentions my sale on her journal and links me to the post - receiving another entry, for a total of three.

Bob spends $60 in the store (I will round up for things like $59, btw). He receives six entries into the hat. These numbers are, of course, after the 30% off is applied, so keep that in mind.

The custom pendant or ring will probably be similar to, but not exactly like this or one of these. And if you win, but rainbow moonstone just doesn't float your boat, I can negotiate that. But I'd prefer to keep it to another cabochon of similar size and cost.

I'll be holding the drawing on Sunday, November 29th, and announcing the winner on Monday the 30th.

All the items listed in the store are ready to ship, and can be custom gift wrapped and shipped directly to the intended recipient, if you prefer. Don't wait until the end of the week to buy that perfect Christmas gift, when an item might be gone! For reasons of fairness, I won't be "holding" items for people during the course of the sale. Only readers of this journal are getting the heads up that it's happening, and when, and all the details, so you'll already have a jump on everyone else, come Sunday morning. :D

Confession time: yes, I was sick, and it was awful, and yes, things have been busy lately. But now I have no excuses for avoiding work on Nemesis except a new video game, and how lame is that?

The truth is, I find myself stuck. I've reached a point in the novel where I've caught up to the "old draft" - meaning I'm actually keeping some of the original chapters, and not wholesale rewriting every line, like I did for the first, well, several. And I'm second guessing myself in ways I didn't before, and for many and varied reasons, several of my beta readers are unable to read right now.

(Message to those betas: I am totally okay with that, really and truly. I understand that some of you prefer to read the whole thing at once, and some of you have Life Stuff happening, and some of you aren't in the best mental place at this exact moment for giving feedback, and I totally understand. I really, really do. When you can pick it up again - AWESOME! I will be excited to see/read your feedback. I don't want to put pressure on any of you, especially a couple of you going through some tough stuff at the moment, and thus, I am doing this post.)

So, I need a couple of new beta volunteers, if anyone is interested. I am just too damn close to this work to be able to look at it and go "yes, this is totally working, and the rewrite is accomplishing exactly what it was supposed to!", or "no, this is starting to not work, and you should go back to X scene and hack away from there".

To be clear: I'm not looking for cheerleaders. Cheerleaders are great and serve a purpose, but I need to know if this middle part especially is working. I also don't want line by line feedback. This will get an editing pass or two when I'm done. What I need is honest story/character feedback.

If it really, really works for you, great, tell me that, even if it ends up sounding like cheerleading. :) If it works for you BUT-- even better, definitely tell me that! I need to know!

I am confident enough to say, if it totally doesn't work for you in any way, shape, or form, that's fine, tell me that, but that probably means this isn't the right story for you, and that's fine. (Unless it is, and I've just totally broken it in the rewrite, but I think one of the betas who've read those first chapters would have said something, if that were the case. *g*)

I am, simply put, too involved in the individual trees to clearly see the forest right now, and I desperately need some feedback from someone who hasn't read the first draft, and doesn't have any preconceptions about it. Someone who, preferably, enjoys reading genre work, in this case space opera with a non-traditional romance flare (it isn't hard SF - if you usually prefer reading fantasy, but have, for instance, enjoyed Firefly or BSG fanfic, then this would probably be right up your alley.) If you can read and respond relatively quickly, even better.

And no obligations - if you start the first chapter and hate it/can't get into it, please do walk away without any guilt (just let me know that's what you're doing!) There is nothing to be gained by forcing yourself to read something you have no interest in.

So. After all that, anyone interested? If you're reading this and have no idea what I'm talking about, you must be VERY new to this journal. But, on the off-chance you have no idea what Nemesis is supposed to be about, a three word blurb:

Telepathic space pirates.

What, that wasn't enough to hook you? Okay, how about this:

As a Rescue pilot in the Commonwealth Navy, Mercy Kincaid swore an oath to save lives at the risk of her own, even if that means relying on a deadly secret. Mercy's a telepath, an outlawed Talent that puts her sanity at risk each time she uses it. Worse yet, being a telepath carries a death sentence in the Commonwealth, if she's ever discovered. But Mercy will use every gift at her command, in order to find and save a life. Until that life turns out to be another telepath, and Mercy is forced to choose between loyalty to everything she's ever known, and a group of Talented pirates who have their own agenda.

Any takers?

~ You restarted after over twenty hours of play, because you found out you missed out on a major NPC, and even though you can totally complete all the quests without the dog, you want to know how he contributes to the overall party in NPC interactions.

(Note: it was totally worth it, just for the Morrigan half-eaten-rabbit-in-her-unmentionables accusation. Also, it was fun after knowing more about the game to pick my character "origin" more carefully.)

~ Playing for more than seven hours in a day has got to be some sort of warning sign, I'm sure. (I needed to get caught back up on my 26+ hours of storyline!)

~ When you're not playing the game, you're obsessively hanging out at the forums, hoping to catch postings of conversational bits you haven't/won't experience in game because of your party configuration choices.

~ You make a mistake and try to steal from the wrong person, failing; forty minutes later, this person accuses you of attempted theft and you realize your reputation with this particular group of people is totally shot. This bothers you enough that you go back and reload a save game from more than an hour ago, even though the loss of reputation will have no significant impact on A) your ability to complete any of the quests, or B) your own party's opinion of you.

(*sigh* I was just trying out the stupid skill; I'd been playing a rogue for over fifteen hours, and realized I hadn't even tried to pick a single pocket. Ooops.)

~ You are entirely too invested in the romantic dialogue between your PC and the assassin you've been flirting with. When unexpected, major cutscenes come up with too many dialogue choices, you agonize over every choice, and hope you won't lose any favor with him in the process, all while trying to decide if Kallian, your city elf PC, is finally over her tragic past enough that there's room for romance in her heart, beside the ever present thirst to avenge her family and people for centuries of pain, rape, and oppression.

~ You've played the game so much, when you sleep you dream about running around searching boxes and locked chests, and defeating darkspawn in combat, then looting their fallen corpses.

~ You are considering writing fanfic. (Shut up. The writing is good enough to suck you in completely, but limited by the actuality of being, you know, a game, instead of a book.)

And the number one way to know you're too invested:

~ When your husband's xbox has a critical hardware failure, and he reclaims "yours", ie, the "back up xbox" so he can keep playing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (to be fair, until DA:O came out, I hardly ever used it), you decide to round up the old gamecube and every game or accessory you ever purchased for it, take it in to Game Stop and thrust two boxes of Stuff onto the beleagured employee who happened to ask to help you, all so you can use the trade credit (nearly $100 worth, as it turns out) to get your own xbox, and keep playing the game for the 3-4 weeks that MS will take to repair what will now be "the back up xbox".

Check. Entirely too invested, yep, that's me.

So, remember how I talked about my NPCs having random conversations when they're put in a party together? It is seriously one of THE best aspects of Dragon Age. Not only is it unexpected, and beyond the player's control, but it's in character, it's their personalities and how they interact, and often, it's damn funny.

Not to mention, the voice actors do a really good job. Whenever my characters start to speak to one another, I stop the party so I can listen to the conversation (if you go through a door or something, it can interrupt these moments of sheer brilliance.)

( Some favorite exchanges that made me laugh. )

So, I find myself really, really amused at all the articles and naysayers that are popping up re: James Cameron's Avatar. People wailing about how expensive it was to make, how it's going to suck, or flop, or never make back all that money, or other variations on the theme.

First, I want to ask them "Have you seen the trailers?"

But beyond that, this is James Cameron we're talking about. The last time the guy made a film, it was the same story - "OMG, it's costing so much money, wail, moan, whine." I remember when he waved his director's fee in order to complete Titanic.

And then it became the number one grossing movie of all time - and still is, twelve years later.

Uh, maybe people should have a little faith, is all I'm saying.

(Plus, seriously, have you watched the trailer? How can people think this movie is going to suck??)

My current work desktop:



Because Avatar is very, very pretty. It looks freaking amazing, and I can't wait to see it.

In other SF related news, I pre-ordered Star Trek on blu ray today, because Amazon now offers release day shipping, which means I won't have to drive across town to pick it up when it comes out, and hope they actually get the blu ray version (no one in town stocked S1 of The Clone Wars in blu ray. Seriously? It's Star Wars, people! I had to order it on Amazon anyway, and then wait. This way, no question I'll get it Tuesday, and probably for the best price.)

Yesterday was Veteran's Day. I had the day off, not that it felt like it. I spent the entire day trying to fix the printer problems with our new wireless router. You see, we got the new router at least a month ago, but neither of our HP wireless capable printers would work on the network, after. Every other device in the house, no problem, but not the printers. We are not totally tech un-savvy. We went online to our router's configuration pages, and lo, there was the laser printer, with the correct IP and everything. The router knew it, but the laser printer apparently did not feel the same, as it persisted in not finding the wireless network.

And this began my several hour odyssey of tech support hell. First, I called D-link. They were very nice, but said if everything else is working, the router is obviously working, and thus we should call HP as it's on the printer end. So, I call HP. The printer is out of warranty, so before they will even say word one to us, we have to pay them $40. Are you f-ing kidding me? This is probably just some tiny configuration I don't know about in the printer settings, and you want to charge me what??

So, let's try the other printer first, then, a color inkjet all-in-one. They transfer me to a different department for that. Who transfers me to another, who finds out we're havung problems with two printers, and transfers me to another, who tries to start helping me, until he finds out our laser printer is a couple of years old, and thus not supported by him, and he transfers me back to the first guy I talked to again.

( It gets better. No, really. It went like this: )

Dragon Age: Origins, that is.

And I say that as a veteran of:

Baldur's Gate I and II
Icewind Dale
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic I and II
Morrowind
Neverwinter Nights
Oblivion
Mass Effect
Fable II (which isn't quite in the same category, really, being very linear and focused.)
Fallout 3

Of the top list, my stand out favorites up to this point were definitely Morrowind and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (the first one - the second one felt really rushed at the end, and was therefore a let down.)

Dragon Age: Origins combines some of the best of both of these games (which is odd, considering they're by two different game companies). Morrowind, with it's gorgeous graphic vistas and open world play capable of providing hundreds of hours of entertainment, was a revolutionary game. I happily played in that world for hours and hours...but it was so open, I never got around to completeing the main quest. KOTOR, less than graphically stunning, had a great storyline that even incorporated a decently written romantic subplot (Bioware knows how to appeal to their female fans.) Unlike Morrowind, KOTOR had good voice over actors, and it didn't get repetitive with the NPCs. But the stryline was extremely linear - no open world gameplay there! I was very sad when I finished. Sure, you could replay and go dark side, but that was the only replayability factor.

By comparison, Dragon Age is not very visually stunning - it doesn't make your mouth drop open in awe, but at the same time, the graphics aren't terrible as some people are saying. They're good graphics, just not great, and I'm okay with that. Because if I have to choose between mouth dropping graphics or a wonderfully written, fantastically voice acted immersive storyline, guess which one gets my vote?

And that's where Dragon Age is strong - it has a fantastic story and characters, with more open world game possibilites than previous Bioware titles, but not so much, like Morrowind, to lose sight of the main storyline. ( Cut for length - an in depth, mostly spoiler-free review. )

Okay, wait. Bioware came out with a new RPG and I'm just now finding out about it??? How the heck did I miss this? I've played all the Baldur's Gate games, both Knights of the Old Republic, Mass Effect...seriously, how did I not know about this?

Dragonage Origins looks pretty freaking spectacular. Anyone played it yet?

Well, what do you know! I'm running Semagic off my thumb drive, and Mobipocket Creator and portable Mozilla. :D All that remains is Photoshop. (Which I found and am attempting to install on my thumb drive even now.)

Of course, all of this makes my thumb drive exponentially more important than it used to be. I will have to invest in a backup version.

I have to admit, it's pretty amazing that these days, you can run software off those little things. It just goes to show - protections people try to put in place never seem to outpace the evolving ability of new technology/software. Companies remove all ability for people to install software on their machines, but they can still run it off ultra small, portable devices, so what are they reall gaining?

I don't care, so long as I get to keep all my bookmarks, and use the software I've become very comfortable with. What's funny - I actually use Photoshop for my job, but they're too stingy to buy it for me.

"We've got a couple of old copies floating around, but you'd have to fight to get them to buy a license for you."

"Okay," I say, "so what alternate software do you have for me to use?"

"Paint"

...

"Paint? Are you serious?"

I mean, really? Paint? It's like the most crap graphic editing program out there.

(Oh, damn. Unfortunately, while PS seems to have installed just fine, I can't get it to run? It starts and then nothing happens, nothing opens. IDK. I'll have to do some more work with it.)

I am only wokring a half day today, which means I'm in a really excellent mood despite still being horribly sick. Come on, stupid cold - I'm tired of having you now! Go away.

Note to Christmas shoppers - I'm going to be doing a really radical sale with my Etsy store, in other words, huge discounts on all current stock in a pre-Christmas sale. I'll be setting up the details this weekend, and starting it sometime this month. This will be on all current inventory. I need to move some stuff. Storing it is taking up a lot more room than you might think, and I'm on the verge of setting up a new workstation/re-organzing all my jewelry stuff. The less I have to re-organize, the easier it will be.

I enjoyed The Vampire Diaries last night. I thought last week's ep was better, but last night's was still good. They still aren't pulling any punches with Damon as a bad guy. :D