Another book sale!!!

I am so excited to announce that I've sold another book!!! My YA paranormal romance found the perfect home with the amazing people at Crescent Moon Press. I couldn't be more excited!

Here's a my blurb on BREATHLESS:

Obituary-reading emo girl Edith Small is broken - the end result of forcing herself inside a mold that doesn't fit. All she wants is to conform to her strict sergeant stepfather's rules long enough to make it to graduation day.


But a boat accident threatens to unravel the life Edith has worked so hard to keep. After waking up in a hospital with a lacerated shoulder, Edith fakes amnesia. Because admitting she received her injuries from a blue-haired girl who breathes underwater is all the reason Sir needs to send Edith on the first bus to military school.

Safe at home, Edith struggles to put the nightmare behind her. But the mysterious creatures that live in the ocean aren't about to let her forget.

After meeting Bastin - a strange boy with silver hair and black eyes - on a secluded dock, Edith learns about the war raging undersea to end human existence. A war that Edith, unwittingly, has become the key to winning.

In a world where death is an ever-present shadow and motives are as dark as the bottom of the ocean, Edith must decide if her life is worth risking for a love that can't survive past the shore.

I'm humbled beyond belief. This has been a crazy ride that just keeps getting better by the minute. :)

Stay tuned for more news and updates!

Becoming Bellatrix (Stage I)

So some of you might not know this already, but I'm going to let you in on a little secret.

I'm a dork. A big one.

Shock and appall, right? ;)

Anyway, every year I've attended the midnight premier of Harry Potter and every year I've done so dressing up as Professor McGonagall.

(That's me in the green.)

Anyway, with the final movie almost upon us, it felt wrong to bring out the McGonagall robe and hat. I mean, this movie is going to be so much darker and more serious than the last ones. For this movie, I need to be a death eater. But not just any death eater...

I wanted to be Bellatrix. The craziest, nastiest of them all. And with the movie premiere only a couple of months away, now is the time to get crackin' on the costume.

So, I went down to my local JoAnn's Fabrics to search through their Simplicity patterns. I'll be honest, I'm a self-taught seamstress. Sometimes my creations aren't all that pretty so, while I'd love to have the talent to just whip up a dress off the top of my head, I don't. So I needed a pattern that I could use as a base and that I found comfortable modifying.

I found this:

I know the face you're making right now. The huh? But trust me. The base for the Bellatrix dress is there. All I'd have to do was runch the front, lengthen the hem, and make the skirt a little fuller.

Next, I cut out the pattern.

Then I laid out the fabric, pinned the pattern to it, and began cutting it out. This is where I took some liberties making sure to add more fabric to the skirt.

Done!

Now it was sewing time! But before I started piecing things together, I pulled a thread down the center of the front bodice and runched it.

There! Nice and runchy.

Next, I pinned the front pieces to the side pieces and start sewing.

Here the front has been pieced together.

And now for the back. Note that I left a slit open to add a zipper.

Now I sew the two pieces together and viola! I have something resembling a dress - or a large black sack. Either way, viola!

Now it's zipper time!!! Which is a little like hammer time but without the baggy pants.

I'm just so proud. This was the first time I put a zipper in that didn't look like two caterpillars getting it on under the fabric. Seriously. But I digress...

Next I added the neck facing.

And then it was time to pin on the arm-hole facing and sew that on, too.



Viola!!

Now I have something that looks more like a dress instead of a sheet with holes in it. As Charlie Sheen would say, WIN!

So, if you look at the original Bellatrix photo you can see how tattered the hem is. What's nice about this cheap fabric I bought is that it naturally frays like the dickens. But to give it that tattered look I went ahead and cut some lines into the hem.

Now, to try it on...

A perfect fit!!!

Okay, not. I ended up having to take it in a couple of times before I snapped that pic. But that's okay. It's always better to have to take things in than let them out. In fact, I don't even know how to let things out...

So, now I have the base for my Bellatrix dress. There's one more thing I have to do before I call it a night. If you look at the original photo, you'll see that Bellatrix's dress has silver swirly embroidery on it. While I can embroider, I can only do it by hand and, people, I don't have that kind of time. Enter my new bff:

FABRIC PAINT PEN WOOT!

Not too shabby. I'll probably add a few more silver swirlys after I finish the corset so I know exactly where I should be drawing those things.

So what do you think? Stay tuned for future posts where I make the arm gauntlets, the corset, tease up and spray paint a wig, and, finally, put the whole thing together opening night!

Comics, Pornography, and Plagiarism

Okay, if you're a follower of my blog, then you know that I'm a fan of comic books. Now, it's no secret that, since roughly 2007, a certain up-and-coming illustrator has been using porn magazines and a light box to illustrate comic books.

Wait. Are you surprised? Scared? Or...oh God. On second thought, don't tell me!

You know, I don't have a problem when an artist wants to use a photograph to base their drawing off of. I understand that, as an artist, it helps to have a model to show you exactly where the body falls when it is in a certain position.

But, if you have to use a light box to trace an image then I'm going to question your ability as an "artist". And when you take your images directly from porn mags and don't even have the decency to change the "Oh" face to an expression that mirrors the storyline of the comic? Come on.

I mean, really?

Ummm...

No, really. My eyes always roll back in ecstasy when I'm really angry.

I don't know about you, but I always look like I'm preparing for an OBGYN exam when I fight crime. 

Now this is just blatantly rubbing it in our faces.

*headdesk*

I don't understand how this is allowed to go on. As a writer, if I tried to pull this kind of "artistic tracing" I would be out of a job and shunned from the industry faster than you could say...

What do you think? Is it just harmless image "borrowing"? Or does this constitute as plagiarism?