Along with my good friend and amazing spoken word artist, Dain Michael Down, I am launching a new blog that will begin February 1, 2010.

If you would like a sneak peak or to follow it, here’s the link:

http://aswewriteit.blogspot.com/

I got accepted into the United Way ASB in Biloxi, Mississippi!!!

Please help by making a small donation –  click me!!

Be sure to check out my review of Christopher Payne’s Asylum: Inside the Closed World of State Mental Hospitals.

Also, if you haven’t seen James Cameron’s Avatar, you really need to.

Lastly, I have begun to blog about my personal life as a writer, single lady living with her cat and various other everyday occurrences. I am choosing not to turn this blog into it because I would rather this remain for my writing as a profession and not my ramblings about how my cat is plotting to kill me or various other neurosis. Feel free to follow me over on blogger should this sort of glimpse into my life interest you!

Snow Storm 2003. KKB.

I was so excited to fall asleep last night, I felt like I did when I was younger and I knew the next day was Christmas Eve. I fell asleep thinking about 1996 when we had such a horrible winter Corpus Christi was closed for what felt like forever and I would cry to my mom about how I wanted to go to school already. 

We lived on a dead-end street back then and the snow plows had pushed all of the snow onto it. My next door neighbor who was more like a frenemy along with my brother spent hours sledding down the, what felt like huge to us, snow mounds left by the plows. It was so much fun. That was also the year, that I got to go outside on a school night and begin to play in the snow because my mom knew that there wouldn’t be school the following day, over a foot of snow had already fallen. 

It was a magical winter that year. And I think that as we grow older, we sometimes strive to get that magic back especially when events in the present-day remind us of what it was like back then. So, for me, it was largely disappointing to wake up to no snow followed a few hours later by a little dusting. They’re saying we’re going to get slammed today and by tomorrow have the 12 inches we were supposed to have today.

Still…so disappointed right now. I was looking forward to snow outside, the fireplace, snuggie and my praxis book on the inside. Whomp whomp.

Gary and Emily. Christmas 2006.

My family grew a little bit over the weekend in the form of two brand new cousins! My cousin Emily gained a husband and a step-son on Saturday! It was a beautiful ceremony followed by a gorgeous reception at the Grand Summit Hotel where we all enjoyed the first snow storm of the season as well.

I was her maid of honor and got to wear a fabulous blue dress that looked like something out of Titanic. I had pretty fabulous hair too. The events concluded with me catching the bouquet…twice. Still trying to debate if that was some sort of omen. Perhaps I’ll finally meet my Mr. Darcy equivalent in the not-so-distant future…heh. 

But until then, I leave you with one of the hardest things I ever had to write…my toast which I started crying three-seconds into delivering (most bets had at least given me five):

When we were kids, we used to sit up on Karen’s bed and play Barbies. For whatever reason, we always had a bunch of budding southern belles and princesses, but we always managed to come up short in the men department. We were usually left with two old standbys – Ken, the one legged who we never really could remember how he became the one-legged and a made up, fancy looking Jordan McKnight who only had a pair of ladies pany house to wear.  As Emily will tell you, the one-legged was often the misunderstood, knight in shining armor, while the two-legged Jordan worked best as a cad.

So you can imagine our surprise when Emily brought Gary home three years ago,

A man who was neither one –legged or fancily strutting the mascara and long braided hair with matching lace panty hose. But as the years went by, Gary showed that he was more so of the one-legged variety then of  the Jordan McKnight realm. I suppose all of those Barbie games and late-night Sense and Sensibility watching with Karen balking in the background over how us girls needed to go for Colonal Brandon as opposed to Willoughby, taught Emily how to choose a wonderful life partner.

To Emily and Gary, may you both enjoy your happily ever after for years to come. Congratulations!

I was interviewed by Cherie Burbach last week! It was a lot of fun as it was my first interview that was all about my writing. You can find it here.

My article – The $12 Million Shark - received Editor’s Choice this week over at Suite101. I’m featured on the front page! Be sure to check it out before I get bumped off!!

http://www.suite101.com/

As of 2:00AM this morning, I have a completed manuscript for my book. I have been working on it for 48 hours straight to finally make it to the ending that I had envisioned for it the first time that I sat down and wrote so much of a sentence for it. 

Now begins the long and not-as-fun road of editing it. Though, that’s for tomorrow, right now I am celebrating and enjoying my accomplishment. It is the first manuscript I have completed since I started college and I feel it is the most mature one I have yet to create. 

Here’s to me!

You can now become a fan of my page via Facebook and you can follow me on Twitter.

Be sure to stop by Earth From Above and read my latest blog about a new social networking site aimed at greener living through sustainability.