0 SoonerCon, so far Posted by Lola (L. Colleen) | at 12:54 PM

I'm at SoonerCon in Oklahoma. Some highlights of the trip:

1. Sarrah getting hit on TWICE last night.
2. Helping film the upcoming Bubbas of the Apocalypse short. (I'll post the link when it goes up on youtube!)
3. Meeting awesome writers and getting ready for AggieCon.
4. Buying too many awesome books to keep me well occupied in Liberty this summer.
5. Not having to be in Liberty this weekend. :D

And that's all I'll write for now. I'll be posting some thoughts from panels and impromptu discussions later this week. STAY TUNED!

0 Start of Summer Posted by Lola (L. Colleen) | at 6:38 PM

So. I moved home. For the first time in three years I'm living at home. So far it's felt like winter vacation. I predict that by the end of June, I'll be ready for school to start again. But in the meantime:
I'm sending off abstracts of papers I've written to Mythcon. (Which reminds me I should email those tonight. Dur.)
I'm substituting at the local elementary and middle schools.
I applied for a summer job at the local library, which I might be REALLY depressed if I don't get it. If I do get it I'll explain why I want it so badly.
I'm gonna keep writing. SoonerCon next weekend! I'll be driving up there with my writing partner, and we'll be meeting our OTHER WRITING PARTNER! A pro-screenwriter!!! Jeff Turner, my buddy and now our writing partner. And he asked us! He liked our movie idea and asked in. Of course we said yes in a heartbeat.
Also my boyfriend has infected me with WoW (World of Warcraft) obession. I currently have a level 13 human 'lock (that's a Warlock if you don't know the terminology, I'm just learning it myself), a level 4 tauren hunter, and a level 7 undead rogue. Apparently this obession with creating chracters is called Alt fever. lol. I'm still on the trial account but I think this weekend we're gonna upgrade me! Sah-weet. Then I can make a dranei and a blood elf when I get the Burning Crusade expansion, also I can be a jewelcrafter. Ok, I'm finished. Sorry! It's a disease this game is!!!

And this weekend I'm meeting the bf's parents. I'm a little nervous. But parents usually like me. I just really miss my bf. We'd only been dating for a month and a half or so before I had to move down here. Long distance sucks. But we'll manage! Ok. Enough personal stuff. Here are my current obessions:

Kaboodle.com
Polyvore.com
Damsel (blog)
Redecorating Middle-Earth in Early Lovecraft (blog)
Whatever Martha! (TV show I'll be talking about A LOT MORE! It's amazing.)

That's it for now! Next blog, upcoming movies I want to see.

0 X-men Origins, or I WANT MORE RYAN REYNOLDS! Posted by Lola (L. Colleen) | at 11:57 AM

The scene it briefly shows in the above clip where he cuts a bullet in half, WAS AWESOME! After it was over everybody in the theater cheered and I yelled, "Fuck yeah!" really loud. It was the highlight of the movie for me. Well... maybe not the highlight, that would have to be seeing my FAVORITE X-men character, FINALLY in a movie. Here's......

GAMBIT!!

Damn. I couldn't find his X-men origins character spotlight like Wade's above. So instead you get this:


Totally made the movie for me. The Wolverine parts got kinda slow sometimes but Gambit totally made up for it. I was sad that Wade Wilson wasn't in the movie more. Overall, definitely bad ass and if you like super hero movies it's worth seeing just for the few amazing fight scenes.

0 If this semester is ever over... Posted by Lola (L. Colleen) | at 11:41 AM

I will celebrate by finally getting my lip pierced. The past few days have been PURE HELL and my lovely boyfriend has been the only thing keeping me from falling apart. Also frequently being the object of distraction, but I'll forgive him for driving me around while sleep deprived, making sure I ate at least 2 meals a day and that I didn't have a full blown panic attack, although I came very close last night. Not a good week. But right now I am finishing (well about to be finishing after I write this) a paper and then I'll have another one to write by next week... if I get the extension I asked for. We'll see.

So, news on the home front:
New look for blog. Not sure how much I like it. The other one was more simple... I might change it again soon.
I was chosen to be the Programming Director for AggieCon 41!!! Woot! I've already got a huge spreadsheet of ideas going and so far the committee is looking like this will be the best AggieCon ever! I want us to do a Zombie theme. It would be AWESOME! Zombies are very in right now. I'm sure you'll hear more about AggieCon in the coming months. Which leads to...
This summer I'm going to be doing a huge convention marathon trying to make relations with regional guests and convince them AggieCon will be worth their time again. Plus getting ideas for programming and like last summer, I'll be applying to some writing workshops as well. So far on the line up for sure are Akon, ApolloCon and ArmadilloCon. I'm considering Fourth Street Convention, FiestaCon and ConQuest as well but there's a bit more traveling involved in those so we'll see which ones pan out.
Also! Not really related to AggieCon specifically, except that I'll probably get ideas for programming while I'm there, is that I'm submitting two abstracts for MythCon this summer. So if chosen I could go to LA to present a paper I've written! How cool would that be? Which reminds me I need to get back to my paper asap.

Oh sad news! Jenny Rappaport the literary agent of my dreams I wrote about previously got accepted to Odyssey. If only I had applied I could have met her! This sounds so silly but I'm very sure that we would get along great. Curse the fact that I'm graduating in December and really need to concentrate on applying to grad school. I'll meet her another way if it's meant to be. :/

Other than all that I'm just REALLY ready for the semester to be over. I'm moving home this summer, going to community college and hopefully working at the city library. I'm actually really excited about the prospect of working at the city library. It would be a childhood dream come true! I spent so many hours of my young child life in that library reading, good memories. Plus I've ALWAYS had a secret fantasy of being an awesome librarian. Now I can live it out!

0 For Future Reference Posted by Lola (L. Colleen) | at 8:43 AM

I will return soon. This summer I plan to keep up better with this blog. Especially since I'll be working on a screenplay and my novel. But at the moment school has again taken over. I have an exam and an essay due tomorrow (the exam was actually due last week but I'm taking late points for it). Then Thursday I have a research paper due that I already got an extension on, but I'm about to ask for another extension until next Tuesday. But next Thursday I have another research paper due. And I'll have another exam due soon too... Fml, right?

In the mean time, go read The Looking Glass Wars. It's decent. Not brilliant, but entertaining and I can actually pay attention during the fight scenes which is really saying something. <- Exact reason I could never write epic fantasy, I hate fight scenes. 'One lunges, the other parries... blah blah blah.' I just skip to find out who won. I know lame right?

But back to work. Also you should listen to Queens of the Stone Age, as I am right now. It has the most amazing calming effect on me. It's bizarre. But I'm as gentle and relaxed as a kitten when it's on.

0 Spring Break is here, so is Mono Posted by Lola (L. Colleen) | at 9:27 AM

So I have mono and it sucks horribly. I slept 12 hours last night. I didn't even want to. Not to mention that yesterday I had to take a nap because after my morning classes I went all crazy and cried. I was really worried about my trip to Washington D.C. to see my best friend because I've been planning it since CHRISTMAS!!! and now I've had to push it back to next weekend instead. But I feel really bad I cost my mom 300-something to change my ticket. She was really worried about me leaving today and not having any fun because I'm so sick. Boo to the universe that always makes me sick. Bleh. I should be packing to go home right now but instead I'm making playlists for the ride home and writing this blog entry. I promised I would keep this more updated.

But Spring Break means.... WRITING TIME!!! Hopefully I can at least revamp my Merlin story for the Gordone Award. I don't think that new creative nonfiction piece is going to get written... I have this really old piece from high school actually that I could rewrite into something better... Now that I think of it. It was our senior english final project. He never told us we were writing creative nonfiction but it totally was. Anyway I'm going to get back to making some playlists. Have a good spring break! I'll keep you updated on the progress of those stories.

0 AH!! This has totally galvanized me. Posted by Lola (L. Colleen) | at 10:53 AM

I already know how my dream agent is, her name is Jenny Rappaport and I've been following her blog Lit Soup (see sidebar). Well... following as in infrequently reading the most frequent post. I'm a really bad blog follower. Feministing.com is probably the one I stay most current on and I only check it every couple of weeks. That's besides the point! Today I checked her blog and look at this post!!!!

I'll quote the things that are what got me so excited and explain why.

"I want the next John Green. By which I mean, I want funny, poignant books about intelligent teenagers. Mainstream YA novels, obviously. But I want to read books about teenagers like me, in high school. I don't want to read about the always popular bitchy sluts, because you know what? I wasn't a popular bitchy slut, and that type of story never has and never will appeal to me as a reader. I know there's a market out there for it, but I am not the right agent for the Gossip Girls series, unless *your* Gossip Girls series is written so well that I fall instantly in love with your writing. (Never say never.)" I have a YA in the back of my mind about a girl transported to a medieval indie music inspired world where all of her really random skills somehow make her the perfect candidate to save the kingdom. (Yes this is cliche' in YA but I won't do it super cliche' like. If you know my writing at all you know I like to play on archetypes and I think I do it pretty well.) She is much like me in high school. So I have a story idea that falls into this category.

"I want an epic fantasy novel that thinks outside the box. This can be done in a number of ways, but the most obvious one is not to do a direct rip-off of Robert Jordan or George R. R. Martin. You don't need an innocent farmboy saving the world to have a wonderful epic fantasy novel. Epic fantasies can have different ideas and yet be incredibly good. I want you to write me one that's *different*. One recent epic fantasy that I adored was THE NAME OF THE WIND by Patrick Rothfuss, which has plenty of standard fantasy tropes, but totally twists them on their head, especially with his innovative narrative structure. Stories within stories within stories. I want your epic fantasy novel to completely surprise me and overwhelm me and make me believe in the power of the epic fantasy novel to sweep me out of my everyday world. Can you write me one? =)" Wow. Sounds like my future tour de force world politics epic fantasy might be right up her alley. Sometimes also referred to as Xavier world since I still haven't decided if it'll be an alternate universe or not. Just wait there's more...

"I want an urban fantasy. I don't have enough urban fantasies on my list, and I'd like one. Perhaps it would be better to say I want a contemporary fantasy. It doesn't necessarily need vampires or werewolves, because I think those are somewhat played out now." *Cough* Muse novel anyone? A very contemporary urban fantasy novel that isn't about vampires or werewolves. Oh and I'm still not finished.

"I don't have enough romance, period. I want witty contemporary romances like Jennifer Crusie, who I adore. I want sexy historical romances. I want paranormal romances that make me love the characters and the worldbuilding behind them." The Muse novel could totally go paranormal romance too. It's on that thin line between Urban Fantasy and Paranormal Romance. I would just need to add a few sex scenes which I think I'm totally capable of and I can already think of where they would fit in the plot. Oh and my writing is SO witty. Not trying to be arrogant. But I think that's one of the strongest parts of my writing. Oh an the Amazon story could totally fall under this too! She might also like the Lewis and Clark story which falls somewhere between Chic Lit, Historical Fiction, and Romance.

"I would love to see a slipstream novel. There are very few out there. I think there could be more. Show me what you've got." and...
"I'm still looking for a great historical fiction novel to fall in love with. Haven't found it yet. Keep sending more." Making of the Treaty anyone? Hells yes. Zebulon Pike? Check.

and finally:
"Because this is a baker's dozen list! Let's throw out a random book description, and see if anyone can write it for me: I want a superhero novel--give me your version of Dr. Horrible in book form with your own original villians and superheroes and plot. Be creative. =)" the Xavier story certainly falls under this category since it's slightly x-men esque although that's not what I originally based it on, it's been pointed out to me multiple times the similarities. My favorite superpower'd character to create: probability manipulation. I had a character named Trix aka Fortune on a super hero rpg once I would love to write her into the Xavier universe somehow.

Can anyone else imagine how perfect this agent is for me? Or actually how perfect I am for this agent. ;) She just doesn't know it yet. Hopefully by the end of this year I'll be querying her with the Muse novel and I have a feeling if it all works out in my favor she'll love being my agent for everything else I write too. It would be a brilliant match because her interests so perfectly match all of my very eclectic future body of work. *sigh* I'm in literary agent love.