A Day in Two Lives: Krispy and Alz!

Hope you enjoyed Asian/Pacific American Month here at the blog! We're wrapping up with our biggest A Day in the Life ever - two friends, one and a half lives. It's our favorite Krispy and Alz (Krispy you know as my co-host on Boba 4 Life) from A Nudge in the Right Direction, complete with Alz's famous sketches!

6:30am So originally a typical day in the life of Krispy would start at 7:25am when I would roll out of bed and stumble my way into the bathroom. However, over Memorial Day weekend, the Sister adopted a puppy and brought him home. So now my day starts at 6:30am...when I roll out of bed and stumble my way to the bathroom to get through my morning routine.

6:30am At this time Alz is without fail entirely absolutely unapologetically unconscious.

7:00am Before changing, I go let the puppy out of his sleeping crate and into his play area. Feed the puppers, play with him a little bit, set out his pee pad, give him his meds. Then while he’s eating, I clean out his sleeping crate and move his toys over.

7:30am Change for work, grab/make lunch, maybe eat some breakfast.

7:30am Still unconscious.

7:50am Out the door, check the puppy has enough water, and leave for work.

8:30am At work. I do a lot of paperwork, registering and calculating and mailing things. Also, a lot of email answering.

9:42am Wielding a star-metal sword forged in the fiery breath of black dragons, I ride my unicorn warsteed into battle against pirate zombies. After victory has been secured, I return to slumber in assurance of a job well done and a world once again safe from the menace of buccaneering undead.

11:15am Take my first break. Usually, I read my book. Sometimes, I write. Check twitter and blogs.

11:15am By this time, I am awake. Sometimes.

12:00pm At this point, so early in the day, my options are numerous and varied, but everything eventually boils down to this most vital of daily activities: INTERWEBS.

1:00pm I like taking a later lunch because the rest of the day doesn’t feel as long when I go back up. Also, there are less people in the lunch room and I can get in some more reading time.

2:00pm It’s jewelry time: sterling silver turtle pendant  with bezel-set fine silver granulation and transparent enamel. All Alz-made, from designing to making the teeny granulation balls and fusing them to the silver, wet-packing the enamel powder and kiln-firing multiple times (once for each color), measuring and soldering and shaping the bezels, soldering bezels to sheet, sawing out the turtle-shape, filing, sanding, and polishing the surfaces, bending and shaping the silver, and finally setting the enamel “stones” in the bezels. Mind you, this is the result of hours and hours of slave-labor with tweezers and torches, but when it comes together, it happens fast.

3:00pm I work for a food-related company, so sometimes at random times in the day, we get snacks. Vendors send us things or salesmen get food gifts or we get samples sent to us. These food items are usually shared with the office. So lots of snacking happens. Last Thursday, we got these delicious popsicles. Mine was coffee flavored. Mmm.

4:00pm Second break. More reading.

4:30pm Snack time, by which I mean a granola bar or a bottle of water depending on where I am and what’s on hand. And then it’s time to plot world domination.

5:00pm End of day! Shut down the computer and head home!

5:00pm World domination plot completed. Now it’s time to up the bodycount. I mean in writing, of course. Don’t look at me like that. What else could I have meant?

5:50pm Get home. My commute is not that bad for a SoCal / Los Angeles commute, but my route actually takes 25 minutes. In morning and evening rush hour traffic, it takes 45-55 minutes.

6:15pm After changing and checking some internets, I go feed the puppy and have play time with him.

6:30pm I read my current book, which is as often as not a library book from Krispy that I end up sorely regretting stealing from her because of how sordidly bad it is. If only I could sandpaper these YA literary travesties from my brain--but then I wouldn’t have any brain left by now.  I don't have any to spare as it is.

7:00pm Dinner at my grandma’s house. I play with and feed the stray cat she adopted while I’m there. I usually get in a good chunk of reading here too.

7:00pm I feed myself and also feed my masters my rats. I often work on secret projects at this time, like not-so-secret manatees or semi-secret half-assed needle embroidery that Krispy hasn’t and may never see because it basically looks like crappy crochet but took me way more time and effort to accomplish.

8:00pm Text Alz and see if she wants boba. More internet time. Writing time.

8:01pm Respond to Krispy’s text that of course I want boba. I then finish up whatever I’m doing, pack up necessities such as Fuzzy Manatee, a bag of potato chips, and the iPad, and head on over for boba and frolicsome adventures Chez Krispy.

8:45pm More play time with puppy to tire him out before bed.

9:15pm Move puppy into his sleeping crate and wait for him to get settled and sleepy.

9:30pm Hang out with Alz. We discuss books, writing, blogging, and random things that have happened during the day. I also nag Krispy to write more.  I make her watch a bunch of my TV shows with me. Including but not limited to: Criminal Minds, Law & Order: SVU, Spartacus, Grimm, Supernatural, Game of Thrones, Legend of Korra, Clone Wars, and Young Justice. Also random youtube videos. Including but not limited to: Tom Hiddleston interviews, Avengers cast interviews, clips of Tom Hiddleston dancing like a loon, commercials and trailers for upcoming movies that may or may not involve Tom Hiddleston, etc.

11:00pm Shower and get ready for bed.

11:00pm Ratty playtime.

11:45pm Sleepy time for Krispy!

12:00am Internet surfing and possibly random TV/anime-watching.


12:45am Time to write more, now that it’s dark out and quiet, with the hum of the refrigerator in the background and the squeaks and thumps of cagefighting rats in the other room, and it’s time to kill more people. In writing. Who may or may not deserve it and may or may not be magic ninjas in exile shacking up with a long-suffering knight who should have known better than to pick that guy up out of the gutter even if it was raining that night.

1:00am-2:30am At some point during this time something always strikes me unconscious. I believe it is called sleep.

One Year Blogaversary GIVEAWAY (Intl)

To thank you for your "folla's", I am giving away TWO prizes - one for readers, one for writers!

For readers:

SIGNED Copy of EXCLUSIVELY CHLOE 

by J.A. Yang

Summary from Goodreads:
Chloe-Grace can't help it - she's spectacular. How could she not be with celebrity parents who have been the queen and king of Hollywood for years? And Chloe is a celebrity all unto herself as well - she's the first celebrity-adopted kid in Hollywood.

But now Chloe's sixteen, and she is tired of every undesired moment of the world's attention. She wonders what it would be like to be a "normal" kid in a regular school. To really understand it, though, she would need to go undercover. So after getting a "make-under" at the hands of her mother's fabulous stylist, she enters the "real" world. But she soon finds out that there is just as much drama there as there is in Hollywood....


Author Bio:
J.A.Yang has slummed it in the valley with the Wakefield twins; slumber partied with Huey, Dewey and Louie; joined Krakow in stalking Angela; and climbed every mountain with the Von Trapps. He is the author of Exclusively Chloe. He lives online at www.jonyang.org.
***
I love that this book is like Maddox Jolie-Pitt's story - an Asian adopted by non-Asian celebs.


For writers:

Angel and Demon 25-Page Critique

The very generous Krispy and Alz from A Nudge in the Right Direction will EACH critique up to 25 pages of your WIP.  That's TWO critiques in one prize!

Why is it called the Angel and Demon Critique?

Because if anyone has read one of Alz's famous rants, you'll know she doesn't pull any punches. She won't be vicious or unnecessarily brutal, but she also doesn't tone anything down just to spare feelings.  Only the brave should apply!

Why would I want a Demon critique?

Because you need a kick in the pants.
Because you need someone who leaves no stone unturned, no nit unpicked.
Because your relatives will not be this honest with you.  (Unless you're Chinese.)

Testimony:
I have undergone an Alz critique and emerged better for it.

Last year I fiddle-edited a draft forever - you know, when you agonize over a single word and call it revising - and it still wasn't working.  I had a sense of where it could go, but I couldn't stomach the thought of rewriting it AGAIN.

So I sent it to Alz.

She tore it apart so thoroughly (and hilariously) that it broke all petty emotional ties to that draft and freed me to start from page zero.  It was revolutionary - and just in time for NaNoRevMo.

Plus she has an MFA in Fantasy.

So Krispy is the Angel? Bwahahahaha-

Shhh, not so loud.  After Alz, Krispy will be a soothing balm of puppies.

NOTES:
Enter through the RAFFLECOPTER below.
Both prizes are international.
You can enter for one or both, but only one winner per prize.  (Make sure you specify which prize you want in the comments!)

A Year of Blogging

My 1 Year Blogaversary is coming up on 1/11/12 and to show my gratitude for your support and friendship, I've got a great giveaway planned!

Through this blog I've met amazing friends like Krispy and Alz from A Nudge in the Right Direction IN REAL LIFE, drunk way too much Boba (4 Life) and...

Reunited with my celebrity crush!

Thanks to social networking, my celebrity crushes are well aware of how much I stalk support them.  So You Think You Can Dance's Robert Taylor, Jr. even responded to my tweet about dreaming he was my soulmate:

But the most epic win last year was the conclusion to my 10-year-hunt for Dante Basco, the cutest guy who ever asked for my number.  (The most famous was someone from the Matrix but he was 15+ years older than me and I didn't recognize him.)

Dante himself not only commented on the post, but retweeted to his legion of stalkers followers.  And yes, ladies, he did apologize for losing my number.  SEE FOR YOURSELF.

In addition to his great sense of humor, Dante is committed to the Asian-American and Pacific Islander community and has formed a production company to tell our stories - and his lovely lady helps produce.  They just finished shooting their next film, Hang Loose, in Hawaii so I hope you'll support him when it comes out.

TwiHardFact: Dante lived with Justin Chon while in HI.  I can't tell who is luckier.

Oprah, Lesbiebers and 7 Posts You Don't Want To Miss

Thank you Ani at Anime's Musings and Alexis at Alexis Bass Writes About Writing.  I've been looking forward to this award for months!  

Goal: highlight previous posts in the superlative categories below.

Most Beautiful: Anti-Acknowledgements or Why You Don't Want to Write In A Chinese Family

Most Helpful: What Oprah's Book Editor Told Me 

Most Popular: June/Gay Pride Music Crush of the Month: Lesbians Who Look Like Justin Bieber (apparently I'm not the only one...)


Most Controversial: A Barbie for the Ladies, with Poll (only 18 more days to decide once and for all...)


Most Surprisingly Successful: Top 3 Things Well-Meaning Bloggers Do That Drive Readers Nuts


Most Underrated: Does Every YA Fantasy Heroine Need to Be Bad-Ass?


Most Pride Worthy: The Vow of Silence (featured ninja post at Ali Cross')


I'm passing this on to: my co-vlogger from Boba 4 Eva Krispy and Alz at A Nudge in the Right Direction


and thanks to:


from Nutschell at The Writing Nut

from Joy at CATHARSIS

My previous post for this award: All My Women Boyfriends (and 7 Random Facts)

Wordless Wednesday: On 3 or After 3? Birthday Preview!

Slytherin in the House

Slytherin, Bellatrix (me), Sirius (Krispy), Gryffindor (Ani), Slytherin Quidditch

Krispy and I finally met Ani at last week's Harry Potter midnight showing, where we had a strong Slytherin representation.

Before you all go in an uproar, I sorted into Gryffindor.  BUT...the Death Eaters have cooler costumes.

yes this is a nice Muggle restaurant, I'm still gonna Cruciatus you

And then all 3 of us bloggers got sick after the showing.  Whoever hexed us, I will hunt you down with my Bellatrix brand of crazy.

You So Have An Accent

Krispy from a Nudge and I did a Tumblr accent challenge!

You know how you never think you have an accent when you do?  Well mine is kind of awful.


(I also clearly had too much sugar.  No more Boba 4 EVAH)

Boba a Go-Go! APA Month Vlog

It's here! Krispy and I on camera together for the first time answering reader questions and showing off weird human tricks. Plus, the unofficial boba champion of Southern California...

Ask Your Asian: APA Month

Happy Asian-Pacific American Heritage Month!

Because of the Grand Ol' South Tour I didn't get to post about this until now, but it doesn't matter because May is not the only month I rock my Asian heritage.

To celebrate, Krispy from A Nudge In the Right Direction and I will be your Asian ambassadors.  Send us your questions about anything Asian from why Korean girls get eye surgery to what Krispy and I consider our ethnic identity.  We're spilling our yellow secrets!

Our Q&A will debut at the end of the month...in VLOG form.  That's right, we're putting our moving pictures into the interwebz.  It sounded like a good idea at the time.  I blame Ali Cross.

Leave your questions in the comments and stay tuned for more Asian-American goodness, including the Asian's Guide to the South.

*UPDATE* Apparently you can ask us anything.  We'll respond.  Maybe in Chinese.

Audiobook Disasters: Time to Stop Listening?

Krispy: I think you need to stop listening to audiobooks.

After I told her my version of Incarceron pieced together from a failed audiobook reading.

Something has gone very, very wrong with audiobooks and me.  I've either hated or been bored to sleep (as passenger, not driver) by several highly lauded books.


Now this could be because I, simply, just don't like the book.

But I also suspect the format has much to do with my somnolent response.

Take Bitten, for example, Kelly Armstrong's first book in her Women of the Otherworld series.  It's about a female werewolf.

A CHICK werewolf.

Awesome right?

I thought it was meh.  (Except for the s-e-x scenes. Dang that lady can write.)

I decided to give the series another shot, this time on Kindle just in time for my Taiwan trip.

LOVED IT.

In the written form, Armstrong's writing was suddenly laugh-out-loud funny, her plots exciting, her men sexy.  I ended up downloading the third book midway through my trip; it's now one of my favorite series. (Just started book 5)

Right now I'm listening to The Iron King.  I was never into fairies to begin with (save for the ones in the Sookie Stackhouse books), but it was a Goodreads book club pick plus I wanted to support an Asian sister.

I've taken to only playing it when my boyfriend is driving the car...

Sophia: (sits up suddenly, blinking) Wait.  He's standing?  I thought he was dead.
Unicorn boyfriend: (smoothly) They were discussing what to do with him, then he got up, he's bleeding, and now he's holding a sword and wants to kill her.
Sophia:...who is this now?

At least one of us is following along.

So here's my quandary: one of my Goodreads groups is now reading Looking for Alaska.  I know.  This one won the Prinz.

We're about to take a roadtrip and I'm trying to decide whether to listen on audiobook (the Unicorn will be driving so he can catch whatever I miss), or if I should do this one right and stick with the hardcover library book I took out today.

What do you think, readers???



Stay tuned for my next post, when I outline the plot of Incarceron...what I heard, at least.

Ladies Do Dessert

Krispy organized a little lady's night this weekend to celebrate (bemoan?) my moving away.  We dined on Taiwanese fare then moved to a popular Chinese dessert joint where we shared this deliciousness:

Sweet Almond and Black Rice hot dessert soup

And I discovered Krispy's sister's napkin stash:

Alz joined us at Krispy's house.  Though she'll never show her face online, I captured her signature rings a few weeks ago at our Borders date. (I thought that date went well, but she still refuses to be my boyfriend.  I'm trying to get her to knit a hipster cap for me as a consolation prize.  I'll buy the yarn!)

It's Twilight meets Austen

Karaoke in Ktown

Krispy and Sophia

I finally busted out of my suburban discontent this weekend!

Krispy from A Nudge in the Right Direction invited me to her bff's K-town birthday extravaganza.  I finally have photographic proof that bloggers are real people you can eat Korean food with (IN REAL LIFE).  Who also sing "I'm On a Boat"* at karaoke.  Creepily well too.

Due to nsfw language, I've refrained from posting incriminating videos of both Krispy on that boat and what I like to call "White Guy 'Rapping' Inappropriate Lyrics," but I do have a paparazzi shot of Krispy singing Destiny's Child:

Style AND singing chops, hurry up boys and put a ring on it

Today I'll be spending the afternoon at the mall with Alz using up both my Borders 40% coupons and eating at the food court.  No Hot Dog on a Stick please.


* parental warning: poorly-bleeped expletives

#100factsaboutme...Or Just Five Book-Related Ones

Q. Inspired by the inane twitter trend of #100factsaboutme, give us five BOOK RELATED silly facts about you.

1. Every year when I was a girl growing up in New York State (like Almanzo Wilder) I would read the Little House series over winter break.  No you don't understand, this was an event.  I put on a long white nightgown (made of fire-retardant polyester, not wool, unfortunately) and walked carefully down the dark hallway as if I were holding a flickering candle.  I had to drink hot chocolate while I read because Laura Ingalls Wilder's food descriptions were so detailed.
2. I'm so deathly afraid of spoilers that I won't even read the entire jacket flap.  All I need is the one-line hook and I'm good to go.  Just last week I had to stop reading an email from Krispy because she told me which guy she preferred in Matched and I didn't even want to know their names.  I couldn't read that part of her email until I finished the book a few days later.  I still haven't actually finished the email because she goes on to talk about another book series.
3. In the last 10 years, I've NEVER re-read a book.  EVER.  Except for the Twilight series.  ::ducks::  I think it has to do with the spoiler thing.  Once I know how a story ends, I lose all impetus to read it.  I'm a diehard "what happens next?" girl.  In fact,
4. I've continued to read/listen to series that I'm completely bored with just to see what happens next to the characters.
5. I don't count non-fiction books as part of my "books I've read this year" number.  And I don't put them on Goodreads.  This is partially because I rarely read a non-fiction book cover to cover.

Using My Powers for Good, Not Emo

I'm guest blogging over at A Nudge in the Right Direction today!

I talk about composing music as a facet of creating characters and story setting for my novels.

And how I was emo as a teenager.

Go check it out and support Krispy and Alz!

The MFA in...Fantasy?

Gracious readers, it is with great pleasure that I present my guest blogger today: Alz from A Nudge In the Right Direction, who discusses her MFA...for which she wrote a fantasy thesis!


Hello, hello! This is Alz, and this is my first time guest blogging and I'm so excited I could dance if I weren't both criminally lazy and so uncoordinated that it's a matter of life and death simply to rise from my computer chair to go to the bathroom.

Today I'm going to talk a bit about what it's like being in an MFA program for Creative Writing—and more specifically, what it's like going into such a program as primarily a fantasy writer.

I wanted to go into the program not just because I thought it would be totally awesome to get a degree in something I love doing, but also because I wanted to hone my craft, get (and learn to give) some serious critique, and be pushed into writing outside of my comfort zone.

Now, these are all things you can accomplish outside of an actual degree-giving program. Thanks to the internet, there are writing circles, forums, critique groups, and various other excellent resources for writers. But discussing things face-to-face in a structured environment was a far more challenging, stimulating, and rewarding experience than anything I've ever gone through anywhere else.

A diversity of graduate classmates and professors all dedicated to the writing craft makes for a very different environment than an undergraduate course or online writing circle. For one thing, they're all there because they want to be there and for the same reasons as you (camaraderie!); for another, since it's a program that they're paying a metric boatload-and-a-half of money for, of course they're going to show up, provide feedback, and contribute to discussion (get your money's worth!). Due to the small class size and the closeness with which we worked, we were as much friends as peers. To watch the evolution of each others' work and trace the growth of your own over the course of two years is amazingly gratifying. Just thinking back on it makes me feel all warm and caffeinated and chocolaty and peppery inside.

Getting and giving serious critique is what helped me grow the most. Between critique from my classmates (whose varied perspectives and questions were invaluable) and my professors (who never failed to praise as much as push for growth, and never pulled punches), I was able to recognize where my weaknesses lay in terms of style and prose, to build on my strengths, and experiment in an encouraging environment. You might need to grow a thicker skin or learn to roll with those peer-and-professorial punches since sometimes critique can be brutally honest, but growing pains are growing pains.

Giving critique was just as important, because in pinpointing what makes a piece work and what doesn't, I became aware of those same issues in my own writing. I'd tell a classmate, "This description is too long and slows down the pace of the story," and then realize, "Oh crap, I did that myself right here, and here, and here too."

This is the major benefit of a dedicated in-person weekly workshop: You become familiar with each other as people as well as authors, and to understand each others' styles and goals. It's all very well for a person to tell you your story is good or bad; it's another thing entirely for someone to tell you specifically how and why, and suggest ways to make it even better or fix it.

Now on to the fantasy part! Alas, hear ye all my lament: Fantasy does tend to be looked down upon as a genre, along with (but perhaps not quite so poorly as) science fiction. Point of fact, I was pretty much the only self-proclaimed fantasy writer in the program, though some of my classmates wrote in surrealist, horror, and experimental genres. Lest I sound like I'm making myself out to be the lone toucan in a flock of sparrows, this was by no means the case—I was an odd fish in a pond full of fantastic and equally odd fish, for we spanned a rainbow of genres and delicious flavors. Have I mixed enough metaphors into that sentence?

I was at first filled with trepidation at introducing my fantasy-based writing to my peers and professors, whose tastes were as far-ranging and different from each other as buffalos are from immortal jellyfish. Turns out my fears were unfounded—I was surrounded by writers who treated my writing as writing. For some, it was their first foray into fantasy while for others it was not their genre of choice, but just because it's not something you'd pick up in a bookstore of your own volition doesn’t mean you can't enjoy it. After all, I read pretty much exclusively fantasy and science fiction on my own, but I thoroughly enjoyed my classmates' writing.

A bemusing and interesting thing is that the people reading my fiction were not my presupposed target (fantasy-reading) audience. Having a perspective exterior to that POV was an eye-opener as my classmates asked me questions about things I hadn't really thought about, such as if the number of hours in a day were different in this fantasy world, and why the trees were the same species as our own trees, and was this taking place in our world but in the past or on a different world or was it an alternate world and if it was alternate then how alternate was it?

Hmm. What things I took for granted and that I thoughtlessly expected my audience to take for granted! Their input expanded my worldview (which I had never before considered narrow) and made me aware of my own blindspots

Mind you, it wasn't all ice cream and sprinkles—there was blood, sweat and tears, and pain, oh gods the pain, the stress, the agony of keeping deadlines and cranking out embarrassingly sub-par work and wanting to die and dying repeatedly only to claw your way back to life because, dammit, you're going to finish that story and revise that bastard and hand it in and succeed.

Ultimately, my sentiments boil down to these: You get out of a program what you put into it. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts. The Force will be with you. The cake is not a lie. Rock on, and keep writing.

My First Stalk = My First Guest

two stalks are better than one

So I crossed the digital divide and asked out IN REAL LIFE two of my favorite bloggers: Krispy and Alz from A Nudge in the Right Direction.

I wish I had a photo of how freakishly adorable they are IN REAL LIFE (sorry I'll stop shouting that now), but 1) I didn't have a camera 2) Alz doesn't put up public photos of her face.  So instead, here is a photo of me stalking.

(Yeah I actually wrote that.)

It's such a rare treat in my part of town to meet two girls in real life (better?) who I can sit down with and share our love of writing and reading, particularly of YA and fantasy.  Lately I've been wishing and hoping for more female friends - especially after a tough day like today, I could really use some gals to talk to!  So any ladies who want to meet up - in real...you know the rest - or call just to chat, let me know.  Seriously.  I really will give you my number. 

AND NOW...

I've managed to coerce  ask Alz nicely to guest blog  this week about her MFA experience, for which she wrote a fantasy thesis.  Yes writers, it can be done.

Check back in a few days for her post!

And Happy Pi Day.