Exam Time?

It's possible I may be moving onto the next stage of my grad program.
If my advisers (one is rather hard to get an email response from...) approve my project, then I'll have to take my exams.
No one else in the program takes these exams. They're specifically for the Plan B Project, which is what I'm doing.
Something one of my advisers said makes it sound like the exams might happen this coming week? Although I'm not sure if that is likely, or just a possibility depending on what the other two advisers have to say.
Since I'm not sure if the exams will happen or not, I'm pretending like they might happen, and I've been reading through the many pages (hundreds) of articles and chapters that I'll need to draw from to write my exam essays.
I can do them at home, but considering how much reading there is, I really should go through as much as possible to get as big a head start as possible. I've read most of it before, but that was long ago.

Except in about three weeks, I'm going out of town. Well, out of country. Mom and I are joining a group that's going to Spain and Italy. We'll be away for a month, since we'll be staying a little longer to visit my cousins who live in Florence. I'm excited and nervous, because I've never been away from home for more than two weeks.
And it didn't take more than a week in Japan to make me cat sick. I hope Leaf does okay while we're away. And I hope Dad's able to take care of our vegetable garden, and get along without us. He's paranoid that someone will try to break into the house, for some reason. Even though he'll be there the whole time.

Aaanyway, the next few weeks are very fuzzy for me. I don't know whether or not it's even possible for me to get to my thesis defense. OR even my exams (thesis defense comes after the exams). So I still don't know if I'll have to do another full semester of college or not.
So, I'll just keep reading.

The Wise Man's Fear

I don't think I ever posted about this book - The Wise Man's Fear.
It's the second book after The Name of the Wind, which I loved so much.
This one was also fantastic. It did take a turn (though I suppose not an unexpected one) that I'm usually not into. But it was handled quite well. And I think I'm one of few people who isn't into that "turn."
But the writing and characters and story are still all awesome.
Seems like we've got a while until the third and final book comes out. But I think there's another book of one of the side characters. I'll have to fish that out in the meantime.
I hope the third book is awesome.

I heard they were planning to make a series based off of these books. Hopefully they wait until the last one comes out. It's always so much better that way.

Banned

So, for the longest time, I was curious about the Disney movie Song of the South.
Which is banned in America.
The characters and songs are still in Disneyland's Splash Mountain, so I always wanted to know where they came from, and their story.


I heard mixed reasons for why it was banned. Someone told me that it was because Song of the South had crows that were supposed to be like African American people. Which made no sense at all, because Dumbo had exactly the same thing, and it wasn't banned.
There aren't any crows in Song of the South, by the way.
But even after watching it, I still don't understand why it was banned. I mean, it takes place during a certain era in history, but that doesn't seem like a reason to ban a movie.

I'll be the first to admit that I'm naive. I know at least one instance where I said something, having no idea that it was considered an insult.
But was Song of the South really banned just because of the era it takes place in? Or am I missing something?

By the way, you can see all of the animated segments online. It's mostly the live action stuff that isn't anywhere. There was a lot less animation than I thought there would be.

Since I didn't grow up with this movie, I didn't get super attached to it. I thought it was good. I like Uncle Remus a lot. He's cool.
I was super excited to see an old Disney cartoon for the first time. I'd seen all of the other original Disney cartoon movies when I was a kid, so I didn't really remember my first experience with them. It's different when you've grown up with it.

To the Desert

Heheh. I will finally get to my super-late review of my trip to Zion.

We spent the first day driving. We went through the saddest town I've ever seen. Some little mining place called Trona. It looked so worn down and deserted.
We stopped in Death Valley, where we camped for the night.
It was so windy that at one point that all the camp chairs got blown over, as well as some of the tents that weren't staked down properly. Heheh.

The next morning, we got to appreciate the valley. I went for a short walk with one of the girls.
We made another stop in Death Valley. We hiked out to some sand dunes. The sand was so warm and soft. There were red ants, but I took my shoes off anyway. So worth it.
I climbed up to the top of one of the highest dunes and ran down.
We drove the rest of the second day until we reached Zion (well, a campground just outside of Zion).
And it rained. Heheh. Such wild weather.

Finally on the third day, we got to go into the park.
We did an eight mile hike, up a steep winding path to get the the Observation Point. It's one of the hardest hikes in the park. But it had a fantastic view. We had hiked all the way to the very top of the canyon.
Here you can see how high we came. We started waaay down there.


Earlier in the day, it actually started to snow. It was very light, but it was beautiful. There was just enough snow in the valley (especially higher up) that it gave amazing highlights to the red landscape. I got so many great pictures.
The whole valley is spectacular. The rock is so bright and colorful. And I saw two big horned sheep!

(Zoomed way in, by the way)
On the bus, I heard one little girl call say big orange sheep, because she misheard.

But my group hiked the trail way too fast. So, of course, everyone was aching the next day. I don't get why they wanted to go so fast. How could they appreciate the scenery?

On day four, we had a free day. I hiked to the Upper and Lower Emerald Pools with some of the other people from our group.
Then I took off on my own. I left the park, and went to Springdale. It's this amazing little town just outside of Zion. It's a great place. And they have a bunch of great rock shops!

The fifth and last day was spent driving home.
It was such a beautiful place. I have to go back some day. Both Death Valley and Zion.

Query=wrong

If you want to get a book published, then you need an agent to help you find a publisher.
And if you want to find an agent, you need to write a query letter.
The query letter must be a radiant example of your writing, because the agent goes through dozens of them every day.
I knew this a very long time ago. I learned a way to write a query letter, and spent a very long time working on it. I had people look at it for me, including a couple English teachers. I was told it was fine.
Last semester, I learned that everything was a lie.
No agent would even start reading my query, because of everything about it. It was too long, for starters. And it didn't start right. They'd probably trash it just seeing what it looked like.
Which begs the question... why the hell is there so much advice about query letters that's dead wrong? And in official sources, to boot.
Stop lying to poor writers. It's hard enough to get published without misinformation about such an important thing.

Here is the place to go to see how to improve on queries, and what a good query should look like.

I've been working to fix my query letter ever since I discovered this. I should probably go over it again soon.

I'm glad I discovered what I was doing wrong @_@ At least now I can move forward.

The Betas

Got a draft of my project turned in last night. Phew.
So I am making the most of my free time.
I finished drawing these guys ages ago, so I'll finally introduce them.



Here are all the Betas, from Katani's story. I finished drawing all the human/dragon pairs, so the next step was to draw all of these guys.
I used them as drawing practice. Most of their poses I got from a sheet of tai chi forms.

First is Shanka (Alpha). She's the leader, and she's also one of the three viewpoint characters of the story, along with Katani and Kazuhi. This is the first time I've drawn her that she actually turned out well.
Thorn (Rose-though she hates that name, which is why she goes by Thorn) is next. Shanka and Thorn are best friends.
Then is Spike. He's probably Shan's second best friend. Close second.
Quill is next. She and Spike are siblings.
Then Shark
Tusk
Singe

They're names after beta fish - Siamese fighting fish.
They're all Syrnian (not a race that exists on our world). Hence the yellow eyes, silver hair, and dark-ish skin.

Those are all nicknames, by the way. Shanka and Rose are the only real names mentioned. And Shanka is the only one who goes by her real name regularly.
Shan is Alpha because she's in charge.
Quill has porcupine quills in her hair, and decorating her clothes.
Shark has a mohawk.
Tusk has a necklace of boars tusks.
And Singe has a bunch of tattoos. A koi and a dragon-one on each arm. A beta fish on each shoulder. Two sharks twining across his back and down around his sides. You can see them peeking out below his vest.
Maybe I should try to draw his tattoos in more detail.

Every time I think I'm done drawing the characters of Katani's story, I find more. I need to draw the other palace dragon. I should draw her together with Chao.

Eating brains

Heheh. Living at the computer has made me scatterbrained.
Possibly slightly crazed. Heheh.
And it's driving me crazy that I can't make anything. There are so many pictures I want to color, and crafts I want to work on. I haven't been able to do any of it for a couple weeks.

I've talked with a few other people who have gone through grad programs.
I swear, these things seem set up to try to break the student.
I guess it's to toughen the student's skin, and prepare them for crazy situations later in life.
But I they go about it very well.
And it is not the kind of situation that will bring out a student's best work...

I also got a really infuriating email from one of my advisers a couple weeks ago. Actually, right when I got back from Zion it was in my inbox. Which is good, because I was in a good enough mood that it didn't drive me completely over the wall.
It's probably not worth talking about. I've been doing too much complaining on my blog recently as it is.
Just gotta keep working.


I haven't written about Zion yet, have I? I should do that. Such a cool place. I gotta go back.

Eyebrow-deep

Bogged down in grad work again.
I kind of feel like I've gone numb about the whole thing. We'll see how long that lasts.

Book Buyers

My favorite bookstore is a place called Book Buyers.
That's where we always take our used books, to cash in for credit. The place is huge, and packed with an incredible assortment of books. Also movies, music, and other cool stuff.
It's been there for ages, and I love browsing.

But people are raising the rent so high around here now that all of the really cool little places are being forced to move, or close.
So the percentage of chain places in increasing, because they can afford the rent. While all the more unique places are forced out.

Including Book Buyers.
They can't afford the place anymore. And they're moving, in just a couple weeks. To be replaced by another restaurant. That street is already mostly restaurants. They don't need another one.
And with Book Buyers gone, my reason for visiting that area is pretty much gone too.
If they can't find anywhere to move to, they might disappear...
Which is heart-breaking.
I went down there today, to use up some of our store credit.
And I pray that I'll be able to go back again some day, even if it's farther from home.
Please don't disappear, Book Buyers. You're the best used bookstore.

Evva

I painted a picture of Evva, the main character in the new story I'm working on.