Inspirational Track for RoboNomics Book II Chapter 21

Hey everyone! I'm doing this a day earlier since I'm all booked up for tomorrow. But I just wanted to let you know that RoboNomics Book II Chapter 21 comes out on Friday, and as I mentioned it will be the last chapter posted of the year.

I've been looking over my plans for 2015, and it looks like Book II will be fully posted on Wattpad as of May. Then I'm going to be working on getting into ebook and print format for you all, with a tentative release date of September.

However, in the meantime, Chapter 21! In which something finally goes right for Andrea. However, before leaving it off for the year, I leave the story on a mysterious. So make sure you check it out on Friday.

The track that inspired me for this chapter is more of a scene-setting piece. I hope the reasons are, by now, clear to you:

Inspirational Track for RoboNomics Book II Chapter 20

So, I haven't been able to up my cadence of chapters released during December. I was hoping that I'd be able to release more than one per week, but December is after all, the least productive month.

However, I do have a chapter for you that's coming out on Wattpad tomorrow, and I will have another one for you on Friday, December 19. After that, I'm taking two weeks off but I'll be back at it in January. So that means Chapter 22 will come out on Friday, January 9.

In the meantime, here's the track that I found most inspiring while I worked on Chapter 20:


Chapter 20 is almost entirely new material. It focused on Andrea's relationship with Austin, and specifically what Austin's been doing with his time ever since the two arrived on Mars. It really does explain a lot about the culture in which they find themselves. I hope you'll like it! :)

Just for Fun Friday

Hey, I know I talk a lot about +Anna Wilson on my blogs. But you know, she's my sis and my best friend and we talk quite a bit and exchange internet things too. This morning she posted this song on Facebook and the accompanying video is just making me smile and smile today:

Inspirational Track for RoboNomics Book II Chapter 19

I'm baaaaack! I finally have time to again present to you the music that inspired my story, RoboNomics. 

Tomorrow, Chapter 19 of Book II comes out on +Wattpad. And in that chapter, we see Andrea continuing to adjust to her new life in New Rome.

The track that inspired this particular chapter is weighty with irony. It pretty much paints a picture of how Andrea, our heroine, could feel, but doesn't. Plus, it's just such a catchy tune. And it reminds me of the name my mom would call my sister and I whenever we misbehaved as kids.



Can't wait for you to read it! See you tomorrow! :)

Small Town Ethos

I have a tendency towards fetishism, but it's not what you think. This one time I lived in a building that looked like a castle -- collegiate gothic that made me want to listen to Nick Drake and read big, leather-bound books and wear spectacles.

These days, I live in a small town. And there's something about the dry, snowless November/December that we've had (usually for this part of the world) with its trees and grass of brown. Something about this little city awash with mid-century browns, its criss-crossing freight rails, its grain silos, its shabby houses on the bad side of town (is there a good side?) and the mix of classic rock and lo-fi indie that they play on the radio. It all adds up to make me feel like I'm a character in a movie about being broke in the eighties. Pretty in Pink, you know, that type of thing.



But isn't that just the thing about being inspired by a setting? In a book or movie, settings always have specific characteristics that help us become familiar with the strange by using touchstones that we may already be familiar with. And for me, one of those touchstones is music. It seems to me that my brain is hardwired to connect genres or songs with specific times and places in the world and in my life. And so now classic rock and indie makes me inspired to write a story about a small town in November. :)