Kalayna Price

Happy Halloween Everyone! Halloween has to be one of my favorite holidays. I enjoy seeing all the kids in their costumes, I love that everyone is talking about the things that go bump in the night, (I love eating candy,) and most of all, I love dressing up. I will use about any excuse to dress up, so as this is my first Halloween at my current work place, I asked around trying to determine if the other ladies in my office would be showing up in costume. They said they would dress up "a little." You know, something they could remove quickly if needed. That probably means witch hats or something, right? I tried to plan accordingly. I have a trunk full of costumes, wigs, and other 'dress-up' accessories. I thought it safer not to go overboard, so I chose a costume that could be easily transformed into 'normal' clothing and showed up as a black cat. Okay, a black cat with fuchsia hair, but come one, I need to have a little fun, right? Wouldn't you know, NO ONE...

I just finished reading Unshapely Things , Mark Del Franco's debut Urban Fantasy novel, and it got me thinking about the gender disparity in UF. Mark's main character (a magic-crippled druid) is male, which among UF titles, is very rare. Off the top of my head, the only other books I can think of with male protagonists are the Nightside novels by Simon R. Green, the Dresden Files by Jim Butcher, and Night Life by Rob Thurman. I know there are a couple more UF novels by males currently being released, but still, there doesn't seem to be many out there. Mostly, urban fantasy is the home to a lot of sharp-attitude(d), kick-ass female protagonists. The girls run the show in this emerging sub-genre, but there is no denying the huge popularity of the few male series out there. This being true, why aren't there more men writing UF series? Granted, there are less men reading it, and most series have a strong romance sub-plot--not exactly a guy genre. From my time in the...

The idea for my NaNo story has been percolating in the back of my mind for months. Even before I sat down and really started thinking about it, I had a rough idea of the world, my main characters, and the general plot (thank goodness about that last one, nailing down the plot is one of the hardest things for me typically.) The past few weeks I have been brainstorming with pen and paper because it lends itself to more organic organization. I might post what some of my brainstorming on paper looks like later, but, to give you a quick description, it typically includes very few paragraphs with lots of circles and squares of text linked together with lines. (Oh yeah, and doodles. I never remember drawing them, but give me a pen and doodles will end up in the margins of about any piece of paper I'm around for an extended period of time.) I'll be honest, I don't spend a lot of time going back over the mess I make while brainstorming, but it helps me to get it out there. After a c...

Yes, it's that time again. Time to stockpile your coffee. Time to stick takeout menus on the fridge. Time to begin clearing the calender and warning family and coworkers to expect you to be in a zombie-like state when they see you, if they see you at all, during November. Time to prepare for the madness. What is all this preparing for? National Novel Writing Month! NaNoWriMo is a challenge that hundreds of thousands of writers all over the world take during November. The Goal: to write 50,000 words between November 1st and November 30th. The forums just opened for the new year, so if you've always wanted to write a novel go sign up today! Then, if you're a plotter, it's time to start plotting. If you're a pantzer, well, I guess you can go hang out in the forums. At midnight November first, the madness will begin.

I'm taking the plunge again and heading back into the madness that is Myspace . I've had an account for over a year, and it's been months since I checked it, but recently a lot of writers have been joining the ranks, so I thought it couldn't hurt to reinvestigate Myspace. I've customized my page so it's not so boring, and I'm currently going out and friending the authors/people I know. If you find me before I find you, please feel free to friend me. I haven't decided if I'll mirror my blog on myspace or not. I'm terrible about mirroring to my LiveJounal account, so I can't imagine I'll be very good at remembering to mirror THREE blogs. What do those of you with myspace accounts do? Do you mirror all your posts, just the really important/informative ones, x-post none sticking to only one blog, or do you make separate posts for your different sites? (Okay that last one makes me cringe even thinking about it.) I also haven't figured out...