Kalayna Price

Well, after a couple weeks of looking at it, I've decided I hate this color selection and layout. How is it that I've designed dozens of websites I'm fairly proud off, but anything I do to my own always looks crappy. *sigh* The cobblers barefoot children and all that, I guess. Maybe I should sit down and interview myself the same way I do my clients.

A couple days ago, I was having a conversation with my brother who had just been invited to the second round of interviews for a job he really wants. He was trying to explain the uncontainable excitement and nervousness he felt--and the interview is still a month off. Ah, the waiting game; I know it well. So my advice, stay busy for a couple days, until the giddy brain -buzz wears off and then buckle in and settle down to wait. From experience I've found that the longer you wait, the easier it gets. That is, of course, until something changes and all of a sudden you are dropped right in the middle of that dizzying anxiousness again.

Well, the cars are all taking on a greenish complexion and the dogwoods smell like dead fish, so spring must have snuck up on me. This is the time of year I miss having a yard. Granted, every other time of the year when things like mowing and raking would need to be done, I'm quite happy that all I'm responsible for is a large balcony. But, spring makes me want to have my fingers in the dirt. Don't take that to mean I have a green thumb, because I don't, but the urge to *try to* grow stuff is there. I think I'm going to invest in some pots this year and try that container gardening thing. It would be nice to have access to fresh rosemary and other herbs again, but I don't know how well they will grow in pots on a balcony. Anyone have any tips? In other news, I highly recommend reading Kim Harrison's new book For a Few Demons More . I would tell you about it, but I'm afraid anything I said would be majorly spoilerish. Do you know how sometimes books in a ...

I apologize to anyone getting my rss feed. I'm probably driving bloglines and such nuts because I just realized that when I took the old gallery down, lots of my images went with it, and I had to revisit all those old posts and fix the links. Sorry!

Well, my name-site is up and accessible on the web, but it doesn't have any content yet. You might have noticed the new navigation bar under my header (it has some glitches still..I'm working on it.) Currently, if you click on any of those links, you will be taken to a blocked out page filled with fake Latin. Weird, huh? I hope to be launching the content soon, but I'm pretty excited to have the bones of the site up. In the past, I've always hand coded everything. I have a link in the middle of my desktop that says "super advanced HTML program"...it opens notepad, and up until the middle of February, that was it: the codes in my head, notepad, and google for scripts I couldn't just sit down and write. Now I'm learning Dreamweaver 8. It's a frustrating program...but it does speed some things up. To it's annoyance, I still hand code almost everything, but I like that it closes my tags for me and I get an instant picture of what I just changed. C...

Well, I did a little tweaking to the blog template, and I totally changed my color scheme. I'll be honest, I'm not completely convinced I like the new colors. There is reason to my madness...I work locally as a web-designer for a small company, but recently I've been thinking about going out on my own, breaking out of the local, and begin accepting online jobs. (It is an entirely internet kind of thing.) So, I'm pulling down my art-gallery site and using the space for the perspective business (KNsDesigns) It makes sense, the url already sounds like a design shop, and I have my name-site registered in the event that my book sells, so it's easy enough to move my gallery to the name-site (as all it does right now is point to this blog.) The problem comes into play when I consider that I wanted the name-site to lead to an author page (which, admittedly, I don't need right now) and color schemes for galleries and books tend to be totally different. (For instance, I w...

This week's library requests include: 2 books on forensic science, a book on criminal investigation, a book on autopsies, a psychology book on mannerisms and body language, and book about firearms. Really, I'm not crazy or planning on committing/solving a crime, but I am planning on writing about one. The book that is refusing to leave my peripheral (so I've been mentally plotting anytime my mind wanders) is very different from the books I've been writing. In everything I've written up until now, my point of view characters have had no reason to have intimate knowledge of guns or police procedure, so the bits and pieces I've gleaned from watching crime shows and reading mysteries has always been more than enough. But, this new character works closely with the police, so I'm thinking I should have at least a little knowledge that doesn't come from fiction. It does make me wonder what the lady putting my holds on the shelf will think of the selection thou...

Recently CNN put out an article about a 12 step program for email addicts. The first step, of course, is to admit you have a problem and email is controlling your life. Most of the subsequent steps are actually very practical advice like sorting email into categories and setting specific times to check the email. I found this article incredibly amusing, probably because around the end of last year I was definitely an addict. I have since come to terms with the fact that if a message were really important and needed my immediately attention, someone would call me. Thus I have mostly cut the cord between the inbox and me. Now I will admit, the first couple days after I send something new out I do hit the send/receive button a little more often, but who doesn't, right?

My dog has a curious habit If he sees me looking at him, he will wag just the tip of his tail, just once or twice. *thump.....thump* If I then talk to him, the whole tail wags. *thump, thump* If I stand and start walking over to him, the tail really gets going. *Thump, Thump, Thump* I reach out, *THUMP, THUMP, THUMP* my hand reaches his head, *THUMP.....* and the tail stops. Now, this happens on a regular basis, not just once in a while. So, is petting a let down? Or is it that the anticipation is exciting and once the petting starts he calms down to happily indulge in it? I'm not sure, but I know when I'm reading a book, it is the anticipation that really strings me along and adds tension. This works in lots of writing elements, whether it's action and danger, or relationships. Holding out really keeps the pages turning (and the readers tail thumping.) Once we reach that fight/love scene/ whatever has been building, that anticipation should be reaching the boiling point, b...

*Note, this turned out rather long* Yesterday, (in a very ranty blur) I briefly mentioned that I worked on a storyline for a game my brother is designing. I want to expand on that topic. Since early high school, my brother has wanted to be a game programmer, and since I've always written, I basically promised to write storylines for him eons ago. Well, now he is finishing his degree in programing, and he and three other engineers are designing a turn based RPG for their thesis (or something.) He told me about the project weeks ago and asked me to think up a story for it. We don't see each other that often these days, but we managed to steal a little bit of time to discuss things like battle mechanics and class types, (which can affect the story) but really that was all we had time to talk about. I tried to work out a story from scratch knowing only a little of the mechanics they would be using, but everywhere I turned I hit stumbling blocks. This isn't a big budgeted Final...

Insomnia, that is. If you've ever said "I'll sleep when I'm dead" or "I could get so much more done it I didn't have to sleep"...you're kidding yourself. Sure, it sounds great to have 22 hours in a day instead of 16 or so, but let me tell you, having 16 usable hours is much better than 22 hazy hours. What is this all about? I've had insomnia since just before Christmas. Over the past month or so, I've celebrated the handful of days were I've managed to get 4 to 6 hours of sleep. I really need 8 to function, and I'm partial to 9...but in the past weeks I've averaged 2 a night, and that has typically been interrupted. Laying in the dark, staring at the walls gets very old, very fast. Many times I get back up after a few hours of waiting on sleep, and I try to work or read, but just because I can't sleep doesn't mean I'm not tired--that deep ache behind the eyes tired. I feel like I'm walking dead in a thick haze ...

Happy accident is a phrase one of my art teachers in college used constantly. He was a rather unlikeable guy, and we mocked him for it, but now I use the phrase (idiom?) Isn't it awful how that happens--you hear something often enough, and it stops sounding strange or unusual. That's how slang catches on, but I digress. "Happy accident" is not something I say about art often, but a phrase I find myself applying to parts of my writing. I'm a planner, for the most part. I tried the 'pantzer' thing for years, but I never finished a novel until I began outlining. I may have very detailed plans for myself with complete summaries of scenes and bits of dialogue, but the bulk of any given outline tends to contain terribly vague sentences like "xxx will find the bad guy somehow and be injured in the subsequent fight." (Okay, usually I'm not that bad...) The very detailed parts of the outline are usually 'candy' scenes. The scenes that won...

Has anyone else ever noticed that research can be a very dangerous distraction? Case in point: yesterday I spent around four hours researching a subject that I used in two lines of dialogue and a couple hundred words of description. Was it good material? Yeah. But four hours? I don't know about that. If I would have left myself a note to come back to it, would it have effected to story in any major way? Nope. I was stuck and research presented itself as a procrastination tool I wouldn't feel guilty indulging. Does anyone else find themselves falling into that trap? Today's progress: HA!... 0 Yup, that's right. Zilch. At least yesterday when I didn't hit my goal I could blame it on research. Today was one of those days nothing clicked for me. Terrible day for it too because the web has been quiet. Practically no one blogged today, and only spam hit the email box. I spent large portions of today staring at the blinking cursor in my word document, then pulling up th...

Earlier today, Rachel Vincent posted an entry about the comment feature in word. The post generated a lot of talk among writers about how they mark up their work during first drafts, ranging from people who use comments, those who leave notes in bold/parentheses/carrots, and those who stop all together to go back and think about it. Really, it is fascinating to hear about how other people go through the process of getting stories on the page. Rachel is a comments writer, and I have to say, she makes a good argument for it. I'm a parentheses writer myself, simply because I get annoyed with the fact I have to use the mouse and a drop down menu to add a comment. As the conversation continued, it was mentioned that other people wished there was a comments hotkey as well. That got me thinking, and as I was sick of researching how cases make it to the supreme court, I looked into hotkeys for word and learned making a macro wasn't too hard. I posted the instructions in the comments ...

Probably anyone who has written a book will agree that you can't wait around for the muse to come. "Sit down and bleed" they tell us. "Those who are ready and working will find their muse." Honestly, I have found that to be true advice (if not particularly welcome.) No, my problem is not a missing muse. She goes on vacation often enough, I've learned to work without her. My problem is a distracted muse. She's always been this way, you would think I'd be used to it. How it happens: I'll be working on a project (or in need of working on a project) and all of a sudden something shiny catches her eye. Then, next thing I know, she's off chasing it into unknown and bizarre places. Maybe I should call her Alice. You would think my muse would be ready to get back to work. She had a vacation from CD the whole time I was editing and most of the holidays. Plus, I fed her very well recently. But, no. Remember that question I asked last week? The one abo...

My revised version of DH is wherever packages go between being dropped off at the post office and arriving at their destination, so to reward myself for finally finishing, I've been binge reading. According to Amazon, Blood Bound by Patricia Briggs is street-dated for January 30th, but BAM had it on the shelf today when I was there. I just finished it, and I have to say it was absolutely amazing. I think Ms Brigg's 'Mercy' (MC) books are now competing for one of the top spots as my favorite urban fantasy series. (Blood Bound is the second book, Moon Called being the first) If you read UF and haven't picked up these books yet, you have no idea what your missing. I closed the book feeling a mix of awe and depression because I don't think I will ever write a book at this level. I highly recommend this series. Hell to Pay by Simon R. Green is the seventh book in the Nightside novels. This series is full of macabre humor and layers of storytelling. I honestly ...

I have a question to ask the fantasy readers/writers out there, but let me give a little background first. A brand new character popped up in my mind today and auditioned for the chance to have her story written one of these days. She is terribly interesting, and even packed her own plot idea (which gets her extra points because plot usually is something I have to work very hard to find) but, while her world would share some of the qualities of other things I'm working on, lots of the mythology and world building I've used in the past wouldn't work in her world. So my question is this: (pretending for a moment that the series I'm writing now gets published one day, and this new idea pans out and also gets published) can an author successfully release books in the same genre that follow different rules? For instance, lets say both books have vampires, but one book has vamps with the classical Stoker weaknesses, and the other book has Ann Rice type vampires. (This isn...

It was 78° on Monday. Tonight they are predicting sleet and ice. All and all, a big case of the sniffles is going around. Maybe winter has finally decided to grace us with her presence? In other news, the end if is finally insight for DH's edit. It's about time. I really underestimated how long this would take me--I'll have to keep that in mind in the future. Well, back to work now! The sooner I finish, to sooner I can ship this thing out and get on with newer projects (and get that word meter moving. Geesh it's depressing sitting there in a stasis, especially since I cut so much off it after Nano) How is everyone else doing today?

Be warned, this is a bit of a rant: I think I burnt out. I have been spending around 14 hours a day for the last week (or two) trying to pound out and polish that draft of DH. I finally finished, printed the thing out, and now I can hardly stand to look at it. The hard part is done, I even thoroughly enjoyed the hard parts of the re-write (the manuscript ended at just above 95k words, but about 15k were brand new shiny words because I deleted a good deal and it was only 85k before.) What I have left a monkey could do. I just need to read the draft on paper to find the typing errors and keep an eye out for awkward sentences. But every time I sit down with the pages, my mind rebels and I can only make it through a few chapters at a time. I get easily distracted, what was funny before is boring now, the description is dull…all and all I want to burn the darn MS. (Which I can’t do because I told my agent I would have it in the mail in the next few days) I think I’ve just looked at it too m...

The first weekend art update of the new year! (I didn't have a camera last week.) If you haven’t been following the progression of this painting but would like to see the earlier posts on it, you can find them here and here . Okay, so let’s look at what I’ve been doing recently. (click for larger image) Today’s palette included: Terre verte , sap green, cadmium yellow, burnt umber, and indian yellow. (leaves and bushes) I also used a little red ochre because I moved the male tree’s arm over probably about half an inch. I’ll be honest, I’m not much for meticulous, repetitive details, like painting a gazillion leaves. I don’t mind spending days getting one leaf perfect, but it better be the only one I do for the painting. *only a small exaggeration* (don’t ask why I decided on an image with an all foliage background) So, I am currently trying to cheat and make it look like bushes and leaves and such without actually defining anything. We will see how that works. Starting next we...