Hats, Boots, & Chocolate

      Are the following images art? That's a debate that exists, but I don't want to get into it. I'm mostly writing today because I wanted to see what a computer program would do with the prompt I gave it, and the results were pretty funny. Does it have the same spirit and soul as human-made art? I guess it depends on your perspective. But at the very least, come and enjoy the goof with me as we explore this bizarre, relatively unknown medium.     And, even better, at the end of this post I'll share two of my own (admittedly pretty amateur) drawings, because at LTUE, I went to about four different presentations by (I think) three different people that all mentioned the concept of a writer's/artist's notebook, and at the presentation on how to use  one of these, I was instructed to expand beyond my normal medium. The two drawings I'll share are the result. :) The Prompt: An ice dragon and a Siberian tiger at lunch in a cozy, herb-themed cafe.    ...

    Wow. It's been a very long time since I've done one of these. Maybe that's a good thing; I've given out a lot of reading recommendations since starting this blog, and it's hard to read that many books in a short time.     At any rate, I think it's high time I gave you all more books to look up! 1. The Princess of the Midnight Ball  trilogy, by Jessica Day George     Do you like fairy-tale retellings? Well, here's three for you, including retellings of the Twelve Dancing Princesses, Cinderella, and Little Red Riding Hood. And, better yet, all the themes of books 2 and 3 tie right back in to the events of book 1! Plus, all the characters are realistically affected by their experiences, so the princesses who play the part of protagonist in books 2 and 3 have a reasonable amount of PTSD and emotional trauma from all that they went through in book 1. But I'm not going to give you any more spoilers than that--just know that I thought these books were rea...

    Call me crazy, but I am in love with cayenne pepper. It's brutal, but when it comes to herbal efficiency, it's fantastic.     How do I know?     Yesterday, whilst cutting vegetables with a mandolin slicer to make a salad, I chopped the tip of my thumb partially off. Now, to be fair, the wound isn't as bad as that makes it sound--the injury is a flap of skin less than half the size of a dime that would threaten to wobble around on the tip of my thumb if it hadn't sealed itself very nicely after a night's sleep.     What does this have to do with cayenne pepper, you may ask?     In traditional, historical herbal knowledge, cayenne is a useful herb to use to stop bleeding--sources I've read and heard about claim that ingesting it or dumping it on a wound can stop the bleeding from a bad cut in ten seconds flat. If you think to question these sources, let me tell you that my experience with this spicy mouth-punisher fits the anecdotes I'...

    Last time I posted an actual post (FWSG doesn't count because I'm  not really saying anything; you guys are), I talked about perspectives, and how I think perspectives are more akin to the color wheel than they are a sliding scale. Now that it's a new month and I have the brain cells and post space to talk about it, let's discuss how that perspective on perspectives can be applied to writing.     In most books, having a wide variety of perspectives is... (crucial? critical?)... very important. Sure, you can write an okay novel without having a bunch of different views among your characters--in fact, in some stories, you could probably get away with representing only the ideologies of the villain and the hero.     But if you want to write more than mediocre fiction, and you, like me, are not yet a great author who could get away with having incredibly few perspectives in their book via clever machinations, perspectives are probably something you'll ...

    Welcome back to the Frustrated Writer Support Group! This is a series of posts I've started as a way to give folks space to talk about their writing--what's going well, what's not, something new they've learned recently, and so on. If you want to give it a shot, go right ahead! I'm excited to read what you have to say! Just remember to always be polite and kind, and try to contribute to the discussion in a positive way.     Now that we've got that  taken care of, the time and space are yours--fill the universe with your thoughts!