Seriously, where?! Because I honestly can’t believe another whole month of life has sped by me, or that I pretty much didn’t blog at all for that month, sans one post. Whoops! Hopefully I can start a proper blog catch-up in May, but until then, here’s how my April has been:

As some of you may remember, I had an honest-to-goodness job interview back in March. Yeah, well, that led nowhere. I’m guessing they decided to hire someone who has this crazy thing called experience—that, or I failed the mandatory math test, since I found it to be a lot more difficult than it probably should have been. (Yeah, a math test. It was for a cashiering job.) Back to square one for me….


I managed to add 555 words to CM this month…then promptly deleted them all, because after a bout of writer’s block, I realized that while the words were taking the scene in the right direction, they weren’t the right words to take it in that direction. *head-desk*


Now here’s something I can be proud of! For the first three months of 2012, I’d been experiencing a huge reading slump and only managed to read around 5-6 books in total. In April, though, I more than doubled that amount with all the books I read! I’m ecstatic, especially since my TBR pile is monstrous in size, so it’s nice to see it shrink for once.


Other than reading, working on artwork seems to be the only thing I’m productive at anymore. I drew, inked, and colored so many pictures and comics, I’ve lost track of how many were done in just April alone. Some of them can already be found in my art gallery. I even finished working on a comic strip someone commissioned, which was…nerve-racking, to say the least, since I’m not used to making art that others request! Luckily, she loved it, so I can now be at ease while I continue working on all the art that’s just for fun!

What about the rest of you? How has your April been? Feel free to link to anything important or exciting I may have missed in the comments!

I only managed to write 1096 words in March, a brand new low for me—my lowest low, in fact. Most of those words weren’t even for CM, my current WIP. Granted, I did take a break from writing at the start of the month to revise, and I have been obsessed with making art lately. On top of all that, I finally had a job interview, so—you know—that stole a little bit of my time as well. Still, those are just excuses—and not even the real excuses for my lack of writing. I’ve purposely been avoiding CM, too afraid I can’t fix the sucky bits, but I’m determined now to somehow break this habit, since no way will any writing get done in April otherwise.

Seriously! April will be the month where I start writing steadily for CM again, no matter how cringe-worthy all that new writing will be.


The fact that any new writing has occurred at all will lead to much happy-dancing…


…and, of course, celebrations with my critique partner.


Or maaaaaybe, after just a few minutes of skimming through CM, the thought of writing will, once again, seem daunting…


…and just like in March, I won’t be able to resist running from my manuscript instead of working on it.


Feel free to place your bets now on which scenario will occur….

Anyone close to me knows that I’ve been an Archie comics fan since…well, forever. Anyone who has read this post knows that I am also a fan of the short-lived horror cartoon based on it. Having just finished an Archie’s Weird Mysteries marathon, I’ve decided to make a list of what are currently my top-ten favorite episodes from it, since it’s either this or mourn the fact that this amazing show only lasted for forty of them….


An invention of Dilton’s starts turning everyone who comes into contact with it into ghosts.

—Jughead: “You’ve got poltergeists on the brain.”
—Archie: “I do not.”
—Jughead: “A leaf falls off a tree. Ooooh! A poltergeist did it! A storm knocks down a power line. Oooh! Poltergeists again! An oven preheats to 350. Oh no! A poltergeist haunts the kitchen!”
—Archie: “Laugh it up, pal. But when a poltergeist-pickpocket takes all your hamburger money, just don’t come crying to me.”


Reggie does a spell to make a character he’s crushing on from an old horror film come to life…only to have the monsters in that same film come to life, too.

—Jughead: “If I go to the movies alone, people will think I’m some kind of obsessed weirdo.”
—Reggie: “You are an obsessed weirdo.”
—Jughead: “Yeah, but I’m an obsessed weirdo with feelings!”


Archie and the gang do their best to protect a cute little alien from the scary-looking ones after it…but should they?

—Veronica: “No, Archie! What if there’s a martian in there with eight arms and a face like guacamole?!”
—Archie: “Then we’ll buy him some taco chips.”


Agents Mulder and Scully X and Y are tracking down an alien in Riverdale, only to assume that alien is Archie’s eccentric friend, Jughead.

—Jughead: “Obviously, my humor operates on a different plane from yours.”
—Archie: “Jughead, your humor doesn’t even take off from the same airport as everyone else’s.”


Local mischief-maker and egomaniac Reggie is abducted by aliens and replaced with a muuuuuch kinder duplicate.

—Reggie: “L-look, you don’t want me! Why don’t you take someone who believes in this science-fiction junk, like Archie?”
—Alien: “Do I look like fiction to you?!”


Veronica uses magical salt to make Archie more devoted to her…only to have him and the rest of Riverdale turn into obsessive, love-crazed zombies.

—Veronica: “Archie, are you crazy?!”
—Archie: “Crazy for you, my dear!”


Vampires invade Riverdale, and rich girl Veronica is believed to be the one chosen to fight them and prevent the coming of the Eternal Night.

—Archie: “I thought you weren’t afraid of vampires?”
—Veronica: “That was before they were real!”


A mysterious new mall appears in Riverdale, corrupting shoppers with greed until they’re trapped there as mannequins.

—Veronica: “It’s Friday! What are we going to do to celebrate?”
—Jughead: “Let’s see…they’re running the Riverdale 500 car race, the Miss Teen Universe pageant is being held at city hall, and a world-famous rock band is filming a video and needs some kids for extras.”
—Archie/Betty/Veronica: “Let’s go to the mall!”
—Jughead: *sighs*

I don’t care what anyone else may say—this is quality TV….

As some of you may have noticed, I’ve finally returned from an almost month-long blog hiatus! I’ve spent the past few hours catching up with the blogosphere, and needless to say, with it already being past 5 AM and all, I’m sleepy. In honor of that sleepiness, here’s some art of an even sleepier Lil’ Winnie and Fritz, along with their non-sleepy—but highly amused—parents:

(Why yes, I did make quite a bit of art while I was away, and yes again, all the non-spoilery ones are going to be spammed here on this blog. Why do you ask?)

This year, something amazing happened:

The entire Archie’s Weird Mysteries series was released on DVD.





For those of you unfamiliar with Archie’s Weird Mysteries, the show is basically about a campy cast of characters not unlike the one from Saved by the Bell…

…stuck in a small town that doubles as the Hellmouth-happy Sunnydale…


...fighting B-movie monsters all the while.


Yeah. It’s that epic!

This show originally aired back in 1999-2000. Before then, the only thing I was obsessed with more than Archie comics was supernatural horror, so you better bet I faithfully watched a cartoon that managed to splice both obsessions. More than a decade later, having learned that the entire series—forty episodes in all—was getting a DVD release at long last, you better bet even more that I snatched myself up a copy so I can relive this gem of a cartoon anytime I please.

Any other Archie’s Weird Mysteries fans out there? If not, what are some of your guys’ favorite childhood obsessions? Sound off in the comments!

I’ve had an incredibly hard time writing lately. Part of this is because I feel like I suck at it and will never, ever have my stories enjoyed by the world at large. However, since I always feel that way, I knew this couldn’t be the main reason why I’ve been blocked more than normal. I’m starting to think it may be Fritz’s fault, the protagonist of my current WIP, Cruel Melody.

You see, ever since page one of CM, Fritz has been like this:


There are a few brief chapters where he actually *gasps* embraces a different emotion…


…but that emotion soon spirals into this…


…and soon Fritz is back to being—yep, you guessed it—like this:


He has every right to feel this way, and it’s crucial to the story, but if I’m getting overwhelmed by it, certainly readers will, too, right? But then I remember how I’ve been working on this book since July 2011. That’s a long time to be sharing such a depressive mindset with my protagonist. Readers won’t be with him as long, so maybe it’s not as bad as I’m fearing, and they won’t wish to reach into the book and slap him after just a few pages.

But there’s also only so many ways a writer can describe a character crying, hyperventilating, and curling up into fetal positions. Fritz has easily abused all three of these heaps, so each time one of them happens again, I really don’t know how to write it, despite knowing what to write, because I feel like I’m repeating myself at this point.

So, the solution? To stop writing and start revising from the beginning. Maybe all of these fears are just in my head, and once I reach where I left off, I’ll feel confident enough to dive back into writing. Or maybe they’re not in my head, and by revising, I’ll have enough of the manuscript fixed to write with ease again. Either way, I now have a copy of CM printed out to better appease my Inner Editor. See?


As you may have noticed, I changed the manuscript to look like the insides of a real book—i.e., made it pretty—to better detect suckitude and thwart such suckiness with my red pen. I have a feeling I’ll get obsessed with this, so if it suddenly seems like I’ve disappeared from the blogosphere, that’s why!

I didn’t accomplish any of the goals I said I would in February. On top of that, I only managed to squeeze in 2418 words total this month, most of which were for CM. (What happened to the days when I could easily churn out 20K a month?! Sigh.) Since CM was the main project I worked on, here’s the current word count for it:


Some of you may remember that my previous word count goal for this book was 80K. I had only estimated that high because my previous book neared 90K. If the first in a trilogy was able to rack up such insanely high numbers, what kind of word count would a standalone eventually get? Luckily, it doesn’t seem like CM will be quite as lengthy anymore, so now I’m aiming for a much saner 60K. Let’s hope my characters don’t suddenly decide to mess with me and turn this book into a monstrous 100K+ or something....

In lieu of having something more interesting to post, here's a silly comic I made a while ago based on characters from my Ravenous series....

As a writer, I’m supposed to have full control of my characters, right?


Umm, yeah: no. No matter how much control I may seem to have at any given time, my characters almost always manage to cut off their puppet strings and prove to me otherwise.

Like last night, for example. Two radically different book ideas of mine suddenly decided to get chatty. And when I say get chatty, I mean make changes—changes in the form of them merging together into a single, freakish hybrid of a book.


That was my reaction at first, at least, until I realized that this merger would give me one less book to write. (I easily have a hundred in my head, so the extraction of a book idea, not the countless addition of one, is always a welcomed change of pace.) I also realized that the book idea I was more passionate about of these two would finally have a major issue fixed when combined like this. (The only issue that has kept me from working on a first draft yet.)

In other words, my reaction became this:


So yes, my characters often have just as much control as me, if not more…and I can’t exactly say I hate it. Some of you may think I’m crazy for believing so much of my control can be relinquished to fictional people like this. Me? I like to think of it as cooperating with the reality-impaired. Book ideas never fail to become more awesome once my characters and I start working together like this, so why fight it?

I just finished creating a comic where I basically merged this show…

…with this one:

To see how in the world such a merging can make any sense, click here! If you’re too lazy to click, here’s a preview of what you’re missing out on:

For those of you who do check out the whole thing, though...hope you enjoy it! I had heaps of fun making this comic....

I’ve been experiencing an insane amount of nostalgia lately for a couple old book series of mine. Naturally—what’s natural for me, anyway—this has led to art:

I've been very MIA this month, haven't I? Sorry about that! I hope to start catching up with blogs and comments sometime this week. Initially, I started hiding from the blogosphere because I was determined to wrap up chapters 20 and 21 of CM. (Something I'm still trying to do.) Then other pesky things stole my attention, like (more) job-hunting and my computer getting a virus. (Now I know to never slack off on renewing my internet security....)

Even though I haven't officially returned yet, I decided to peek back in on the blogosphere because, hey, it's Valentine's Day! This is a very special day for me, because back in 2009, this is when I finished the first ever draft of FLG. Very freaky for me to realize that this was three years ago already. It's even freakier for me to realize that I started writing that first draft sometime in 2007, making this book around five years old. Where did the time go?!

I have no idea, but since we're on the topic of time and Valentine's Day, it's been a full year since I last shared this pre-FLG comic where Arden pokes fun at the Cupid-hatred his father, the love god Eros, has:


(The artwork makes me cringe now, but it is Valentine's Day, so I can't not share!)

And with that, I'm ducking out again until I start a proper blogosphere catch-up this week. Hope February is treating you all well!

Total Words Written in January:
4838 words. This is my lowest word count ever for January…sigh. I can’t say I’m not disappointed, but I’m not kicking myself over this, either, since pesky things like job-hunting have needed to take priority. Hopefully I can write more next month!

Projects Worked On:


(YA Fantasy—First Draft)
I’ve pretty much been on a quest all month to finish writing chapter 20. That quest is now officially bleeding into February. (OH WOE.) I finally finished writing this scene, though (why was it easier to manifest in art form?!), so hopefully I can wrap up this chapter as a whole soon!

Goals for February: Add at least 5K words to CM, as I said I would for onegrapeshy’s Grapemo. I want to reach 40K already!

I finished reading through all of FLG again, ninja-kicking pesky errors from the manuscript!

Goals for February: Complete another round of edits for FLG, now that I have swhisted/my critique partner’s comments to work off of—yet another thing I said I’d try accomplishing for Grapemo here!
(MG Horror—First Draft)

I’m honestly surprised I started working on this book, but it’s been fun, so I’m not complaining! Since it’s currently not my main project, I won’t say much about it for now. It’s a Middle Grade Horror, though, so that alone makes it awesome, yes?!

Goals for February: Finish chapter four of NF#1, since I only have about a page left....
(Pre-FLG Short Story—Completed)
As some of you may remember, I finished working on a short story this month! Click here if you’re interested in reading about the Greek love god Cupid Eros and a dead pigeon….

What about the rest of you writers out there? What did you accomplish this past month and hope to tackle for this one? Sound off in the comments!

What happens when I wonder what it’d be like if a certain teenage love god of mine hadn’t simply been banished to Earth in his book, but was banished during a zombie apocalypse?

This happens:


Needless to say, Papa Eros and Mama Psyche do not approve….

Growing up, Alvin Schwartz’s Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark series was easily one of my favorites. Not only did it help fuel, and probably solidify, my love of horror, but sparked inside me an obsession with folklore and urban legends.

The writing alone isn’t simply why this series is a fave of mine, though. The artwork by Stephen Gammell is just as notable, if not more so. He had the ability to turn even the most mundane of images into something nightmarish…and I love him for it. His artwork managed to be eerie, moody, and atmospheric all at once, and to this day it can make me jump while glancing at some of it. As an artist, I’ve tried mimicking his style countless times, I admire his work for this series so much.

Unfortunately, future readers will have no flippin’ idea what I’m talking about, because although reprints of this series still contain Alvin Schwartz’s stories, they are completely devoid of the illustrations that have helped make it such a classic.


That’s right, you heard me correctly. Thanks to this article, I have been devastated to learn that creeptastic art like this…


…is now replaced with art like this:


Nothing against the new artist—his art is quite good—but seriously, between these two scarecrows, only one looks like he’s going to jump off the page to skin you alive, after doing something similar to one of the characters in the book, you know what I mean?

The unsettling nature of Stephen Gammell’s illustrations isn’t the only reason why they’re superior. As pointed out in the article I linked above, his pictures brought you into the story instead of simply depicted them. Horror is all the more horrific when you feel like you're a part of it, after all, and that’s something the original artwork accomplished in spades.

RIP, Stephen Gammell’s illustrations. You shall live on in the hearts of fans, if not future editions of Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark.

Guys. I have just discovered the most amazing thing ever…and that thing is twisted Disney Princess art:


Click here if you want to see even more creepy awesomeness!

Why yes, I am insanely tempted to do twisted art of my own now, thanks for asking….

I aspire to run my own webcomic someday. Until that day comes, however, I have no problem simply supporting other people’s webcomics!

One of my favorites is Candi by Starline Hodge, centering around a college art student named—what else?—Candi. (There are also things like a Squirrel Mafia and the Sexy Police, but I’ll avoid getting spoilery and instead direct you to the first comic so you can see all this awesomeness firsthand!) I can easily relate to Candi when it comes to things like this:


I can’t relate to a certain aspiring author in this strip, since I’m way too pessimistic to believe I’ll be published someday, much less famous, but gosh, it still makes me giggle, especially since there are writers like this out there:


Why am I bringing up my love for Candi now, you ask? Because yesterday I received this one-of-a-kind ACEO card based on the comic:


Adorable, yes?! Starline was even awesome enough to include this fun little doodle as thanks:


I’ve ordered other art from Starline in the past as well, including—but not limited to—this poster:


This amazing piece of art has since been framed so I can better ogle it! Every time Candi is updated, I can’t help but spend a few minutes ogling the latest comic as well, in hopes of soaking up the awesomeness and becoming a better artist. I only discovered this webcomic in 2011, but already it has become one of my faves, with Starline now one of my favorite artists. Again, here’s a link to the first comic so you can see why I love Candi, and Starline’s art in general, so much. I doubt you’ll regret it!

My characters, Fritz and Winnie, were once super-close best friends, as can clearly be seen in this pic. Now, though, nearly 35K words into Cruel Melody, their friendship is more like this:


…and it’s all Fritz’s fault. *snickers*

(Silly me, drawing scenes instead of writing them. Time to change that tonight, methinks….)

I am this close to writing a scene so utterly devastating in CM, not only will characters be bawling, but possibly readers as well. If I were a normal writer, this would leave me choking up at my keyboard, especially since I can experience the darkest depths of my protagonist's emotions as if they were my own. I’m not a normal writer, though, so despite this emotional connection, just the mere thought of writing this scene is making me react, instead, like this:


Yep, I rejoice whenever my characters are in pain. I have no idea why, since I’m always compelled to hug other people’s characters when they’re suffering, if not shed honest-to-goodness tears for them. (I’m looking at you, The Final Eclipse!) My future readers will probably be appalled to learn such a scene is making me giddy like this. But…I can’t help it. When it comes to my characters—characters who always have fun torturing me with their inopportune chatter and unplanned plot changes—their torment is the most hilarious thing on the planet to me, so start cooking up some popcorn, because I intend to enjoy every last minute of it!

Any other writers out there crazy enough to relish the pain their characters go through? Are you the kind to instead cry whenever they’re forced to endure the slightest bit of tragedy? Or does their anguish never make you bat a lash, be it in sympathy or amusement?

Because Barbara Watson asked about it, I've decided to blog about the musical inspiration behind CM. Excuse me as I ramble....

I mentioned back in this post how music has played a crucial role in bringing Cruel Melody to life. While music has always been vital to my writing, CM is the one book I honestly believe never would have existed had certain songs not existed, too.

The first notable song is “Love Like Winter” by AFI:**


Listening to this song years ago birthed a pair of characters in my head out of the blue. I had no idea what they looked like, what their personalities were, or even what they were named. However, I did know they were boy/girl best friends with the potential to become something more, and that the boy would have Issues™ that could drive them apart forever.

I tried to figure out more about these characters so they could get their own book, but all my attempts at that failed. This didn’t stop the characters from owning even more songs, though, including this one:


Puddle of Mudd’s “Moonshine” ended up being all I listened to for a whole month because of these characters. It helped keep them both alive when they easily could have faded away forever…but still I didn’t learn more about them.

Then, in 2011, I heard Three Days Grace’s “Over and Over” for the first time:


I was still revising FLG at the time, but despite how close I was to finishing that book, it had to take a backseat, because OMFG, I was finally learning something about those ambiguous best friends in my brain! Thanks to this song being on repeat, something just sparked, and these characters developed appearances, personalities, and even names. I also figured out what their book would be about and exactly what mythology would be used for it. (Nixes from Germanic folklore FTW!) This book even managed to quickly snatch up a title, which I shamelessly stole from a Black Light Burns song:


A little more obvious now why I think music has been so important to CM’s existence, yeah? In order to honor that importance, every chapter title in CM is actually a song title from its playlist. Some of these have been super-challenging to work around (one chapter is called “Hey Zeus the Dungeon,” for example), but it’s been fun regardless, and I can’t think of a better way to pay tribute to the very thing that allowed my current WIP to exist!

Anyone else out there ever have music play such a vital role when writing? If not, has something else been equally as important, to the point where you feel the need to pay tribute to it in some way in the actual book? Sound off in the comments!
*This is a lyric from one of the CM playlist songs above. Can you guess which one? ;)

**This music video freaks me out a little. Although I’ve loved the song for years, I never saw the vid for it until after I figured out that my protagonist would be a supernatural water creature, so seeing one in the song that brought him to life is…eerie, to put it mildly!