So, from November 17th to December 2nd, I was traveling around Japan with my mother and Step-father. I’d already been over there on my own for a month earlier in the year, but this time around we decided to go together – I got to be tour guide. XD
In Kyoto…
In Hiroshima…
In Osaka…
More photos to come. 
I’ll post some from my previous trip too.
… not entirely at least. XD
Anyway, I’ve been busy doing real-life things – as we all have to at some point – but I’m getting a month off work while my workplace shuts down for the quiet season and I’m left to do nothing but be a good girl, not spend any money since I’m not getting paid for four weeks, and stay at home for the most part doing whatever I bloody-well want to! 
That being said, I’m not promising anything regrading What Not to Die For. I have the plot, I have partially-written chapters, and it’s just not working. It will be done eventually, but I need to refresh it. So I’m going back an re-writing every chapter and hopefully I can use that as a launch point to finish it. While I’m doing that, though, I’m dabbling in writing for some other fandoms – mostly anime ones – and I should post up a couple of short stories soon. Probably one-shots.
In between my writing goals, I have a few other projects going on as well – I’ve recently returned to AMV editing and have been having a ball with it. I procured myself an expensive copy of Sony Vegas Pro 10 and I’m in love with it. On top of that, I’ve gained a completely NEW hobby: Garage Kits. Now, I never pictured myself as the geeky girl sitting in the basement building Gandam models, but I kinda had to pull myself up recently and ask myself “Why?”; I’m an anime and manga basket case from way back, I regularly paint and draw said things, and I collect figurines. Why the hell wouldn’t I be the model-building basement dwelling type person?
So, I bought myself all the crap I needed to get started, and amused myself by watching a truck-ton of instructional videos on YT and reading how-to’s online for a month before my stuff rocked up in the mail and I got started. XD
Also, in my absence, I went to Japan for a fortnight. Check for pics.
What Not to Die For now has over 100 people with it either on alert of have it Favorited. It makes me giddy with happiness. 
Also, chapter eight brought in more than 1000 hits in less than twenty-four hours. I couldn’t believe it.
Chapter nine is up now, with largest word count yet, compared to any previous chapter, at 5000 words.
Had me getting all teary… T__T
It’s an absolutely gorgeous little MV based on Lily and Severus, all done in manga style. The track it Japanese, but you certainly don’t have to speak the language to feel what the video intends.
Makes me sad and happy at the same time.
Chapter 7 of What Not to Die For is up!
Happy 50th review! WNtDF has now had over 4000 hits since I published the first chapter, and there are 8o people who have either put it on alert or put it in their favorites. I think it’s a pretty damn good milestone to reach in less than two weeks.
I am ludicrously happy.
Chapter five is up, and getting some lovely feedback. Makes me happy every time I see those reviews.
Sadly, I was hoping to get chapter six finished and uploaded by the time I went in to hospital for my surgery, but I don’t think it’s going to happen, because simply do not have enough time (or extra arms) to pack and and write at the same time. So, unless I managed to squeeze some time in to get it done (which I doubt I can), chapter six won’t be up until sometime next week, I can’t give an exact date… 
… I am absolutely loving the response to this story! I can’t say that I was expecting anything positive when I posted the first chapter, and I was quite sure people wouldn’t like it, but seems people really do like it so far! It’s wonderful. Thank you.
Chapter four is on it’s way, it should be up within the next twenty-four hours.
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/7192242/1/What_Not_to_Die_For
Finally, I have the first chapter of one of my fics posted… and it isn’t any of the fics that I mentioned that I was working on in my last post. But this one is flowing easier. Oh, well…
Read, review, critique or flame- it’s really up to you.
Well, more than a moth after my first post, and I’ve published….. nothing!
Not for lack of trying, mind, I do have a few chapter written for two separate fics, I just don’t feel comfrtable publishing at this point yet, simply because the plot for one is not completely fleshed out yet (and I want to make sure the kinks are worked out before I publish, else I’ll have to work around kinks after the fact. And I hate it when I’m told to go back and read old fic chapters again because the writer had to edit it. Couldn’t fix any issues in the first place?), and the second one is a new idea that barely has the first chapter written, and is only being written because it’s battering the first story aside and begging for attention in an annoyingly repetitive whinge somewhere in the back of my subconscious.
But, they’re getting there, slowly.
On a side-note; I have tickets for the midnight premiere Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 at my local cinema. And I will, doubtlessly, post a raving review this coming Tuesday after I’ve seen it, and cry all over my keyboard.
Hopefully Pottermore will fill the void the movies will leave in my life after Tuesday, just as the movies filled the void the books left before them. Goddammit, I’m getting all sappy again now…
Eh, time to go channel the feeling into some fanfiction. Baibai!
Fanfiction is something I’ve been reading for years, on and off, and when I feel like it. I love it. No, really, I do! But there’s just so much… utterly crap fanfiction online these days that it makes me wonder why I really bother with it at all… and then, miraculously, I’ll find an absolute gem of a fic, and my love is rekindled anew!
Along with reading fanfiction, I’ve dabbled a bit with writing my own too. But, sadly, I usually give up after one or two chapters. Either because I can’t be bothered, get bored, unmotivated, my muse dies (and it has, multiple times, writhing in agony), or realize how bad my fic is and loose all faith in any writing capabilities I may of may not possess… I am my own worst critic.
Now where have I heard that before…
And, no, I have never published any of it… besides an admittedly terrible Yu-Gi-Oh! fic that I wrote when I was thirteen.
I guess maybe it shows something that I can tell how bad it was now, even though I couldn’t at the time.
Anyway… back on topic.
Just recently, I’ve been swimming around in the fanfiction ocean that is Harry Potter, on fanfiction.net., after having abandoned it for several months. And, quite frankly, it has reawakened my want to write and – wait for it - publish it this time. For better or for worse.
So, before I got carried away with myself, I decided to make a public record of my decision to write again on this blog here (which I’ve had for years and never really used), so I could remind myself why I stuck my nose back into this messy business of fanfictioneering again the next time I start feeling self-depreciating.
Also, I wanted this blog as a forum for my own thoughts on my fics, including authors notes and such, because I hate it when I read fics and find that half the word count is made up up bloody ANs and useless random bullshit…
I think I’ve rambled on enough for one post, in any case, so I’ll leave it like this.
Wait for the fiction!
