Tag: elly

Workaholic Est. 0422

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Workaholic Est. 0422, making and creating!

I sort of dropped off the face of social media lately (how people manage to do ten million things and still have energy to tweet up a storm on Twitter is beyond me, and I will forever admire them for that ability!).

Here’s the scoop

I’ve been working on several exciting projects that I’m thrilled and pumped about! Believe me when I say that I’ve been working non-stop on these projects for the past few weeks!

Beneath the Red Lamp & Other Tales


The short sequel to The Year is Now (TYIN) will FINALLY see the light of day. I’m working on an ebook of short stories set in the empire before and after the events of TYIN.

Beneath the Red Lamp explores what becomes of Elly after the Battle of Pluto.

Details on when this will be released will be coming soon. I don’t like to give out dates like candy. I need to make sure that thing is polished before I let it join the dating scene 😉

*This is not the final cover, just a placeholder. 

An Actual Website

I’ve been building a website from scratch. I am PUMPED for this. I cannot wait to let you all see it!

It’s almost ready, but I plan to release it into the wild to coincide with Beneath the Red Lamp, so keep your eyes peeled. Oh, and don’t worry, The Command Deck will always be around because the blogger platform is easy to use for, well, blogging! It will be linked to the site.

Sisters

This project is my baby. I haven’t been this emotionally attached to a story for a long time. It’s set apart from the rest of my works because it does not take place in the empire. It takes place in another alternate reality, a much grimmer one than our own world and Elly’s.

*This is not the final cover, just a placeholder. 

“Sisters” as I’m calling it, is in its infancy. Yes, this will be a full fledged novel. I’m going to do something I’ve never done before and live tweet my progress on it. Follow #sisters422

With that being said, it is on the back burner right now (you have no idea how much it pains me to put it aside while I get Beneath the Red Lamp up and running! Copy-editing and formatting are the most tedious tasks ever, and I cannot have any distractions).

Oh Look, a Penny!

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Do you carry around a lucky charm, a favorite key chain, or wear a special necklace to help get you through the day?

Whether we like to admit it or not, we all have that one “lucky” little talisman we carry around in our pockets, grab before a big event, or keep in a special spot in a special place. There is some part of us that likes the idea of clutching onto hope. Even characters have secret little good luck charms!

Meet JFK JR! Elly’s lucky fifty-cent piece. Before the big incident of 2012, she carried it around in her wallet. It was one of those things she came across back in 2003, at the height of the Iraq War. Something felt weird and off when she stepped forward to board the bus that would ferry her to the airport.

Elly glanced down to see a dated piece of Americana staring up at her. A smile pleated her nervous face as she plucked it from the asphalt. In the months that followed, nerves were best dealt with by flipping the coin between her forefinger and thumb.

It had earned itself a permanent spot in her black, leather wallet when she made it back to the States. By the summer of 2012, she had almost forgotten it was there.

The empire took every thing she had on her that fated day she crossed the anomaly. The Lafayette snatched it all up before Lieutenant Braxton could log it into his system.

50¢ Facts:

Share your own lucky charms, favorite objects, and awesome objects made of pure awesomeness on Facebook! 

I’ll be there posting one of my own!

Want more US 50¢ coin facts? Head on over to Wikipedia for more info!

And I’m Back With Easter Greetings!

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From your friends at the Empire, here’s to wishing you a happy Easter!

Imaged edited by good old Microsoft paint. 😉 You can never go wrong with the classics.

Fantastic News
More than you ever wanted to know about my new motherboard, CPU, and ram.

Last time I posted, I was lamenting over my computer situation. I lament no more! I have a tablet, and it helped feed my addiction to the Internetz, but it doesn’t have all the bells and whistles as a full blown computer. Tapping and scrolling are okay for simple, mindless surfing, but for anything more than that… *pulls at hair*

Elrond taking a selfie with the new goods.

I had a lot of help from my comrade in arms getting all of this installed. I learned a hell of a lot about installation! I ended up deciding to replace the essentials. For less than $400, I have a working computer that is twice as powerful as my old one. I had to give in because I need a computer!

My review of everything is posted below. If anything changes, I’ll make an update. So far I give everything 5/5 happy computers.

I’m still trying to find Photoshop. I found an ancient Photoshop disc from from the early 2000s (possibly earlier!). I want to do some more searching before I install my retro copy. 😉

CPU: Intel core i5-4460 (quad core!)
I could have gone for a beautiful (yet pricey) i7, but I am not running any virtual servers or dummy terminals, and I highly doubt Lord of the Rings Online needs an i7, ha ha! So far this little chip is awesome.  I was terrified of installing it (my comrade in arms did the installation and showed me how to do it). It’s not so scary after all because it’s mostly a matter of “the round peg goes in the round hole; the square box goes in the square hole!” You just put a dab of the thermal past onto the heat sink and install the fan.

Motherboard: ASRock z97 Pro 4
My old motherboard was about ten years old. I had to get new ram (DDR3) to accommodate it. Eventually I will get a new video card (thankfully it has a regular PCI slot). It is a little smaller than the old one, but it still fits in my case beautifully.

I just want to rave about and praise how lovely the bios looks and how easy it was to install the drivers from the disc that came with it. The bios is more advanced than any bios I had seen before. You can navigate with your mouse, and the graphics are a step up from the old blue and white standard.

The driver disc came with a tool set that allows you to easily monitor the temperature of your CPU (among other things). FYI: you want your CPU to stay below 50 degrees Celsius (this is important if you do a lot of gaming or video/photo editing). It also came with Chrome. I am the queen of lazy. With the click of a few buttons, I had all the drivers, the tool set, and Chrome installed.

Oh, and the Operating System install? Within 30 minutes, it was up and running!

Ram: Two 4gig sticks of GSkill DDR3
It’s ram…It’s fast. It does what ram does and fits in the DDR3 slots. 😛

There you have it, more than you ever wanted to know about my new computer setup. I will shed tears when the credit card bill comes, but it was all worth it!

Mission Complete

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Day 18 of my post-a-day challenge! I finished the drawing I mentioned in Animate Me and My September Sunday. When I set myself to something, I tend be obsessive about completing it.

I am pleased with the results. I did a slight animated version and a normal version. Whether or not it can be passed for a screenshot or part of some sort of anime is up to the viewer!

Elly from The Year is Now
This scene is not in the book or anything. I just liked the idea of her holding some kind of magical (or super sci-fi sphere that glowed).
The animated version! It’s only sparkles, but I thought it looked neat.

My September Sunday

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Day 14 of my Post-A-Day challenge! Today’s prompt is a repeat of the workout prompt, so I’m just going to ramble about my day.

There was an early morning meeting at work, but it was okay because today was Jersey Day. The bountiful supply of donuts and coffee was a plus too. Now that football season is finally here, Sundays are my favorite day of the week.

For one, if we donate a dollar to the charity of the month, we get to wear our jerseys. Two? Football tends to clear the place out. When you have a backend job like I do, this is like finding treasure. That treasure? Time!

Remember my not-so-secret-anymore goal I posted about on–was that yesterday!? It feels like a week ago. Okay, let’s start over. Remember my not-so-secret-anymore goal I posted about in Animate Me! (yesterday)?

Here is the what I hope will soon be that goal! This is Elly in a futuristic outfit gazing down at a tiny version of the portal that brought her to Y.E. 0422. The scene inside of it is in Chapter One (when she is walking around the Deserts of Athena just before Braxton shows up).

…And now comes the hard part: doing the digital version. Other artists are different, but digital versions take me 1,000,000 light-years longer to do than art on traditional mediums. >.<