First, to get the site business out of the way, I had hoped to have Robin posted up by now, but a mild case of food poisoning has kept me in bed. You can't keep a good author down, though. I think my muse is finally returning from her vacation, so we'll see what happens :-)

I do want to wish everyone a very happy New Year. I was going to post a blog on my two year anniversary of signing on with TopShelf;I'm only a few days late! It sounds harsh, but glad the holidays are finally over for another year.

This has been an unusual morning for me. What began as another pointless argument with my mother actually turned into something worthwhile for the both of us. I've learned a lot about her today that I didn't realize before, and I've been shamed for it, I'll freely admit.

The important thing is, I learned she isn't clueless, as I once believed by her previous reactions. In the past I've tried to talk to her about my being transgendered, and it's resulted in some pretty upsetting responses. The thing is, she doesn't remember any of it.

Well, I'm taking the first steps to going back to school. I should have done this sooner, but you guys know what a rocky year this has been for me. My mother's not been as big a help as she insisted she would be, so I'm taking the initative (Edit: Not her fault - she's been busy this year too! :-D)

So um, it turns out my mother took out a small life insurance policy on me several years ago as part of a package that covered the three of us, adding me as a term policy or somesuch. I don't really understand how it all works, but basically, since the cost was increasing she decided to go ahead and cancel it.

Neither of us knew this was the type of policy that you pay into like a savings account. Between this and the award for the Halloween contest, I'll be able to afford a new keyboard and stand (I'm going with the Yamaha PSR E423) with a little bit left over. :-D

I have, for as long as I can remember, had a love affair with the language of music. In seventh grade (That's about age 12-13) my friends used to joke that when I played "A Whole New World" from Aladdin on my trumpet, it was like I went into a trance.

I never learned to read sheet music because of my vision problems. I actually found it MUCH easier to just learn to listen to what the guy next to me was playing and just copy him. I got so good at it that I could pick up a new part of a piece after an hour of practice listening to someone else sight-read it.

Don’t sweat the small stuff.

It's a piece of advice my drama teacher gave me when I was in High School, and for years I had trouble following it. What she literally meant is that little things aren’t worth being upset over, but a lot of little things can pile up if you let them.

I've been doing a lot of thinking recently though, and between the advice of my no-longer perspective therapist (more on that after the break :-)) and advice I’ve received from friends and concerned community members here, I’ve come to a conclusion.

Embrace the small stuff too!

Why is it that I can say the words in my head, over and over again. I know exactly what I'm feeling inside.

And then when it comes time to just say it, I completely choke to the point of racing behind a proverbial ten foot thick wall? It's almost like those feelings completely disappear for the brief few moments that that window of opportunity is there.

I wonder how many other t-girls go through this much self-doubt, or if it ever truly stops?

Okay, bear with me here because I have a lot going through my mind right now, and I need to try and make sense of it the best way I know how - by writing. I don't know how much of this I'll be able to get into text, or how little, and if you get lost along the way, just raise your hand and an usher will be along shortly.

Well, just a super-quick update on the Aria Blade front. I won't lie to you guys, there's a LOT that I still feel needs to be done to improve the story not even counting work on the final chapter of the initial saga, but I'm almost done with the first chapter's revisions.

It doesn't hurt that it really didn't need much work. I've touched up dialogue here and there, and unified narrative, adding and editing as I felt necessary. It's shaping up rather nicely.

So I just finished the rough draft on a Halloween-themed story. Like Becoming Robin this is seated very much in the Sweet / Sentimental category. Unlike Robin this isn't a novel-going-on-serial :-P

It's an actual, real-live short story, from me, the Queen of babbling endlessly. Can you believe it? ^_^

Hey all,

Let me first apologize for the excessive delays. To be completely honest, I've been really depressed for the last couple of weeks now since my birthday, and compounded with being sick it's just slowed my writing to a crawl.

I know what I want to do with Chapter 21 of Robin, it's just finding the motivation to sit down and write or do anything I normally enjoy doing. It's frustrating, to say the least.

A few of you might have caught a glimpse of my earlier blog/rant/vent before I pulled it in regards to family issues.

I decided after posting it that it was just too heated and not within the general "friendly" of the site, so I pulled it though I have a hard-copy for myself because just writing it helped me quite a bit. :-)

Hey all!

As requested, I've uploaded the full, unresized concept images for Aria Blade, Raven Wing, Coronal Rose and Volcaness as they appear in-costume in Chapter 19 of Becoming Robin, "Halloween".

Posting this in blog form, but I'll be shortly adding it as an Outline/child page to Chapter 19.

~Zoe

I feel like the main character in that movie, the name of which escapes me, who sets himself up as the target for a bunch of woodland creatures after threatening to develop on a nature preserve.

While going through some things, I stumbled across my old Canon Rebel. This old thing brings back a lot of memories. See, when I was a freshman in high school, I decided I wanted to try out photography, so I bought a cheap piece of crap single-reflex SLR camera and took Photojournalism.

There were maybe ten of us interested in the class that year so we were all incredibly close by the end of it (You try spending six to ten hours a week in a darkroom with someone and NOT learn their deepest darkest secrets after awhile *grin*)

What an amazing journey this has been for me both as an author and, I feel, as a human being, not so much from writing my Robin stories but from my connection with the community here.

I've been thinking for awhile now about what it is I want to do with Robin's tale. I read somewhere recently (I STRONGLY suspect someone's signature right here at BCTS actually :-D) that the sign of a great story is when you dread writing the final chapter.

Two hours ago I tried to go to bed, but resulted in my just laying awake and thinking. I have so many plot threads going around in my head right now, and to add to that complexity, Aria Blade's sub-story just became a TG story in and of itself in the darker reaches of my warped imagination too.

 
I had originally written this as a comment to chapter six, Love is in the Air, but I kind of got on a roll and wrote more than I felt comfortable placing in my own story comments section, SO! I'm posting this here, and I'll probably child page it under Chapter Six for organization's sake. Thank you everyone, for your continued support. It really does mean a lot to me :-D

Rawr! Okay, so here's the deal with book two of Becoming Robin