Author: AJ Mullican

Next Tuesday is a big day for me.

It’s my first time going to a bar by myself since before I got married.

It’s for the journalism gig. I’m reviewing a band for the website, but my husband doesn’t have a press pass with me that day.

And I’ll be in downtown Phoenix by myself. Me, who gets lost there during Comicon when all I have to do is follow the geeks in cosplay. Me, who got lost in downtown Montreal after getting dosed (long story) with what I’ve been told was probably LSD.

So this should be interesting to say the least.

I can do it though. I’m a big girl. I just have to keep calm and not freak out.

Yeah, that’ll happen.

So Facebook has this thing called “On this Day” where you can see what you posted on the same date in previous years. Today I saw two powerful memories, one bittersweet and one just plain heartbreaking.

Today is the five-year anniversary of the day I left HealthSouth. I worked there for nine years, and they were good to me. I learned a tremendous amount there and made great friends (and I still miss you guys).

Today is also, sadly, the one-year anniversary of the death of our cat, Luna, who my husband had long before he met me. Though we now have Rory, I still feel sad at times knowing that Luna is gone.

It just goes to show that you never know what new beginning will come from any ending. Yes, my job and life in Huntsville ended, but my life in Sierra Vista began. Luna may be gone, but Rory is a little fluffball of love and energy.

One door closes & another opens, or some such cliché.

I know I’ve been talking nonstop about my writing lately, but don’t forget I still do art commissions! Here are some examples of what I can do 🙂

I have a reason for the sudden call for commissions: my husband’s birthday is in a couple of months, and I’d like to get him something nice with my own funds. So if you’d like something original, send me a message or leave a comment 🙂

So I made a breakthrough today in my writing. I wrote a scene so heartbreaking that it brought me to tears.

Let me explain the title of today’s post. My mom has always joked that because I don’t cry at movies, I don’t have a soul. Well, Mom, I wrote something fictional where I knew the outcome and I just about cried at that. The only reason I think I didn’t cry is because I was trying to figure out the wording of something, which was distracting.

There ya have it, folks. I have a soul. It’s in there somewhere.

Of course, the reason I came to tears was because I broke the heart of one of my characters, so maybe I’m not quite as soulful as I think I am. 😉  Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a full-on George R R Martin here. The story just needed more character interactions and reactions, and this was a powerful reaction to something I had already written.

I’m loving watching things unfold as I add more to this story. Some of it is already great, and some of it will still need a lot more work, but that’s how drafting works; you have to keep at it until it shines. And sometimes even then you have to polish it even more.

Got a whole new chapter written today, but I think I’m stuck again. Can’t decide how to meld the chapter I added into the one that was already next. I realize now that there was too much of a gap between chapters, so it’s good that I added one, but now I’ve created a new dilemma of what to add next. I still haven’t bridged enough of the gap.

I also have to go back and put more depth into the character interactions in some places. Maybe add to the description of some scenes. Paint a better picture. Put a fucking table & some chairs in there somewhere.

Still lots and lots of work to do. Far from publish-ready. Far from submission-ready. But I’m not letting myself get discouraged. I will get this done. It’s only a matter of time.

Recently I posted about my attempt at writing erotica. The characters were taking it there, but I have decided that I’m going to make them behave and force the characters back into the original story I wanted to write.

Not that I think my sex scenes were bad, but it was getting boring to write. I was getting tired of it. It was getting me into a rut. (Pun not intended.) So I’m going back to the urban fantasy/supernatural story I had intended on writing. Cutting all the sexy fun times I had written. It’s almost back to square one, but that’s not as bad as it sounds. I hadn’t gotten very far.

I also need to get back to revising my first book. I need to get my word count boosted. It’s getting there, but quite slowly.

And finally, I need to cut my damn fingernails. They’re scraping on the keys & it’s driving me nuts.

Ok, so my interview/concert last night didn’t go so well. I got pissed, I fumed, I’m over it.

I also had an idea while I was in Phoenix. Now I’ve got another interview in the works that’s all my own design, something that might not have come to mind if I hadn’t been in the area.

There are also bonuses to this idea. I get to help my geek community, a community that helped me to largely overcome my social anxiety. I get to represent the state that has become my home. And I get to see an idea of mine take form.

So the concert didn’t go the way I had hoped. So what? Life moves on. Take what you can from it and use it.

I am a glutton for punishment.

Because I’ve been wanting to do more work with TV shows for Talk Nerdy With Us, I asked to cover a few different shows once they come off summer hiatus.

By “a few,” I mean five or six.

What can I say? I’m hooked. Not that I don’t enjoy the music work, but I wanted to branch out more from just the one show that I currently cover.

Oh, and I’m going to be doing a book review soon, too. It’s the most recent of a series that I love.

And then there’s the movie I’m reviewing tomorrow. And the band I’m interviewing live before the concert I’m reviewing/photographing. And another concert in a week and a half.

Gotta love it when you love what you do.

No, I’m not talking about that! Get your mind out of the gutter!

I’m talking about my #writing. The new story I’ve started, which I hope I can turn into a #novel–the one I talked about the characters pulling me into a different sub-genre than I intended–is rapidly turning into an #erotica story. Oops.

Not that there’s anything inherently wrong with writing erotica. Loads of people write it, and it can be very lucrative if you are good enough at it. It’s just…different. Not what I normally think of myself as writing. True, there are sexually explicit scenes in my first book (yet to be published, still very much a work in progress), but it’s far from an “erotica” novel because there are only a few sex scenes.

This is new territory for me, but it’s kind of exciting (not that kind of exciting) to see where it takes me. Who knows? Maybe I’ll find a hidden talent somewhere in there. Maybe this is just supposed to be the genre I’m meant to work in. Stranger things have happened.

It may not be a traditional family–y’know, the mom, dad, 2.5 kids, with the house in suburbia, white picket fence, all that jazz–but it’s my family.

As I was working on an album review for Talk Nerdy With Us ( www.talknerdywithus.com ), my husband was lying next to me napping and our cat, Rory, was sleeping at my feet. With the way I was sitting with the laptop and the way the both of them were sleeping, we made almost the perfect little circle on the bed. It was cute and quite poetic (but I was busy working, so whatever poetry came to mind quickly slipped away as I got swept up in the lyrics I was listening to), and I got to thinking….

Ok, so we don’t have kids–and never will–and we live in a smallish apartment in a very small town. Still, I’m living the dream. My dream. I have my husband, we have our Rory, we have a home, and we’re living comfortably. And that’s all we need.

The three of us, together in our little circle.