Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Contests, Winners, and Shameless Plugs

First, check out this great contest posted by Amanda over at Ramblings of a Drifting Mind! She's celebrating her 100th, 125th,and 150th followers, plus her 21st birthday to boot!

Also, Justine Dell is having an amazing contest to celebrate her 250th follower, and some of the prizes include: a query critique, a 3 chapter line edit, and a full MS copy edit!! (Seriously people, do you know how much a full MS copy edit costs? Go enter RIGHT NOW!)

Next, WINNERS! After putting your story suggestions for my scar to the test, it turned out to be a close race... but only one caused a friend I haven't seen in a while to get ginger ale up her nose. This was the scenario:
Friend,"Hey, what happened to your hand??" (takes a sip of ginger ale)
Me, "Zombie."
Friend, (snorting laugh) "Ow..."
Me, "Yah, it hurt"
Friend, "No, I totally got ginger ale up my nose-- it hurts!"


So congrats to VALERIE GEARY!
Email me and we'll figure out the prize delivery :-)


And last, I am shamelessy plugging my sister's blog, which is made of AWESOME, particularly if you love Japan.
She regularly posts about life in Japan, from festivals and tradition to raising three kids there, and she has added a couple new features that I love:
"Monday Manglish", in which she outs Japan for its bizarre and unintentionally hilarious usage of english...
and Friday Field Notes, in which she posts photos of interesting bits of nature she has seen whilst walking the kids to school. She started this feature at the request of our mother. Our family, you see, is genetically inclined to notice every plant and bird and living creature within a 50 foot radius, and then rush home to look it up in a book.

We may or may not have been guilty of nearly crashing the car over a clump of daylillies on the side of the road...

But I digress-- go check out my sister's blog and follow her for some cool insights into Japan!

Friday, September 24, 2010

I Like a Good Scar. Also, a contest!

Seriously, I do!
I know, it's weird. Maybe even a little icky. But as soon as I see an interesting scar on a person, my head is filled with scenarios to explain how it got there. It must be the writer in me, finding inspiration everywhere....

And now, I've got a lovely little piece of inspiration permanently etched onto...ME.

That's right. See the date of my last post? That was exactly one day before...gasp...the accident. Oh OK, it wasn't that dramatic. Like most scars, it was caused by the silliest, most mundane thing you can imagine, and not by an exciting encounter with a bear. I cut the holy crap out of my first finger when I was (drumroll please) washing dishes.

A word of caution now goes out to my dear readers: don't ever, ever, wash a glass by shoving your hand and the sponge down into the glass and twisting. What happens, I learned, is that a giant chunk of the glass breaks off, and your whole hand runs into the sharp edge. YUK.

The funniest thing was trying to explain to well-meaning people with vitamin E oil that I didn't really care if the cut left a scar. "But, it will make for interesting stories!" I said to blank stares. Then they would give me the oil and I'd mumble thanks. Really, the only thing I cared about was that it didn't cripple the finger, since I make my living with my hands. I discovered pretty quickly it's hard to set diamonds with that finger out of commission!

Fortunately, the finger is fine, I just missed the tendon, and all I have left now is a nice, curving scar.... which I am thinking up good stories about, because the glass thing just isn't cool enough. ;-P

For those of you with weak stomachs, look at the big picture below of our new puppy, Ebi, and think happy happy thoughts. For those of you with a high gore tolerance, scroll a little farther for a photo just after I got my 6 stitches.




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I know, yuck, right? But man do I look tough now! Yah, just ask those muggers who's tough, after I wrestled the knife away from them and-- what? Story not believable? Alright, I'll come up with another one. Or better yet, why don't you guys come up with a good story for my new scar, and the one I end up using gets a fancy little silver pendant made by my pitifully scarred hands :-)

UPDATE: I always forget these things.... I suppose I need to put an end date on the contest, huh? So how about Tuesday the 28th at 9AM. Get your stories about my scar in by then, and I'll announce the winner on Wednesday evening, after I've had a chance to try out each story!