rat on her head. if you think its an optical illusion just watch that clip again. it's a rat!

Farewell my brethren as you wake up on this day of days and brush your teeth with deepest despair and dark tears of sorrow and regret, you soldiers of mercy, you folks on my friends list working retail on Black Friday.

Be brave.

And for everyone else, remember that no electronic equipment, no buy ten for a dollar, no 50% off sale is worth crushing a person to death or making a worker run into the back crying. Use your restraint. No plush toy is worth tormenting other... human..... beings..... uhh...

Hey Guys, FC is right around the corner and I need as much help as I can get to save up! So I'm open for commissions right now and my prices are pretty cheap!

I'm doing Name Your Own Price Commissions. =3 You tell me what you have to spend, any amount! No amount is too small. (You want $.25? Ffffff, I'll give you something for that also.) In return I'll do you up something really fancy! There are no restrictions on these commissions other then scat and cub(porn). Just ask, I'm very open minded! I'll take a few of these as deadlines for Christmas so you can offer that special someone the gift of art for the holidays. <3

All my styles and mediums are up for commission right now. Here are some of my favorite examples from my gallery of what I can do:
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/1602998/
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/3015153/
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/2897007/
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/2897041/
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/1844115/
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/2709012/
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/2717746/
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/2709067/
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/2437474/
Also offered are FC Pre-Orders for badges, character sheets and clean-lined single character sketches. Prices range from $5 - $30.
I will be in the Dealer's Den, so commissions can be picked up at the con if arranged before hand.

I am offering FC Pre-Orders for:
Badges at $10 -$25 depending on request and difficulty
Examples: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

Character Sheets with front view (3 detail views) OR front and back (3 detail views) at $15 - $30 depending on request and difficulty
Examples: 1

Clean-lined single Character Sketches with light shading at $5 - 20$ depending on request and difficulty
Examples: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

Check out here for full info on prices: http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/1069562/


If you're interested just comment, note or email. =3 I accept PayPal, money order, personal checks and cash only!

Thanks everyone and stay happy!

This charmander's head reminds me of a goomba... :/


http://cgi.ebay.com/New-Official-Charmander-Plush-Doll-Pokemon-Time-RARE_W0QQitemZ350284640481QQcmdZViewItemQQptZLH_DefaultDomain_0?hash=item518e9770e1

Slight change of plans. Mixedcandy (meaning myself and my husband) will not be attending Further Confusion come January.

Costumes will be delivered at the convention via friends. I will keep everyone posted with who will be delivered there.

Sorry about the changes but we will see many of you come FWA in Atlanta next year.

A little over ten years ago, I moved out of the house I'd inhabited for almost my entire life to that point. We didn't move that far away, but we never wanted to revisit the neighborhood. It was too thick with good memories; the first house my mother fell in love with, the cul-de-sac in which a few homeschool families staked out their territory, the years when we didn't have money for computers and we scored our threads at thrift shops from necessity, not pretension.

This past Saturday, faced with the prospect of a day home alone with a paper I didn't want to write, I did what every good college student with wheels does: took a road trip. I decided to hit the highway home.

It was a strange trip. I'd barely thought about the old house in a long time. It cropped up in my dreamscape, as childhood landmarks do, but without much significance. I felt some mild curiosity about the state of the neighborhood.

As I made the last turn, felt the road unfold before me. There was the curve at the bottom of the hill; rounding it, I no longer needed my GPS. Off to the right stood the trees on which I'd tested my first pair of glasses (the visceral excitement when I realized that I could see the leaves at a distance). Ahead the trees enclosed houses and quiet streets. As I drove down the last street, excitement and anxiety sat heavier in my stomach than I'd expected. The trees were taller, the streets a bit more worn, the houses somewhat more settled.

Then I turned into the cul-de-sac, and the driveways were all there, and the house. It was the same color. The porch was broken, just as I remembered it. I parked on the street and jumped out, ran to the very center of the asphalt circle. There was the legendary nail, pressed firmly into the street itself, with the tire-marks still on it. This was the subject of one of our most sacred childhood traditions. I pressed my fingers against it gently, wishing.

No, I won't tell you what I wished. You know the rules of wishes as well as I do.

Then I went exploring. The backyards: small changes. They'd built a deck behind the old house, and the fence at the bottom of the yard was partially deconstructed. But the bare patches were still bare, and the walnut trees still stained the grass with black burdens. The old tree-house tree, which I remembered as the home of fat angry ants, still stood.

The mailbox: battered but much as ever, the package drop easily opened. We used to catch box turtles and leave them in that box for the mail lady to release. But at Christmas time we left her homemade cookies.

The playground: a little faded but still solid. The mulch, source of the family-famous Time Leslie Had To Have All Those Splinters Pulled Out. I climbed up the slide, ran the monkey bars, then sat on the swings and called my parents. "Guess where I am?" Three deer crossed the playground while I talked; another change. I remembered one or two foxes, mice, snakes, raccoons on the side of the road, but few deer.

The hill; no longer as big as I remembered, the sledding slope grown over with evergreens. I looked up at their tops and reflected that these trees were younger than I. Nothing was as big as I remembered it, but I'd been expecting that. It filled me with delight rather than disappointment.

Every spot was another memory, a holy place. I walked them with the avidity of a pilgrim. When I left at last, I felt quiet satisfaction.

I am thankful for my life now. I have family and friends and thoughts so much bigger and richer than anything enclosed in the cul-de-sac. I sit here now, with my sister and brother-in-law, listening to Bob Dylan, my current writing project open in another document. Tuesday night I hung out on campus, talking for hours with friends about church and school. I write this post for a blog read by friends in other states, even other countries. God has blessed me richly in the past decade, in the good times and the bad.

But I'm thankful, too, for my memories, for the house with the broken porch and the tiny cul-de-sac and the old playground, and the small piece of me that plays there still.

Woman on her phone in the Grocery store
"while I was texting I started smelling Poo and he said he didn't want any anymore..."

( And a slightly bad one from work )

I'm back! ...With commissions! :D

Offering: 5.50$ commissions.
These commissions are flat colored / linearted pieces. :)

- I take animals only. I'm not comfortable with drawing much of anything else (this includes anthros. D: ).
- I usually take about a week (at the latest!) to get done. It really depends on if I have a lot of homework (but I'm on break for 4 days so I might knock them out in that time frame! :3 )
-Please provide a ref (more than one if you'd like! ) .
-Please check back in the comments, because I tend to reply to them. :D
-I'll ask for payment when I'm halfway done with the commission. BUT I need ONE commissioner that's able to pay right now since I need money for something (xmas presents on ebay! x_x ) so if you would like to pay now, I'd be SO grateful! C:

Examples:

Art Gallery: http://www.furaffinity.net/user/retroh/

3 Slots Available:
1. matrices
2.
3.

Thanks in advance! n_n

"I can't believe you guys have a roommate who routinely pisses himself and you guys don't care."
"yeah well...."
At this potluck, which I go to weekly. (If you're in the bay area you should come. I wanna meet other caughtsnippeters)

"You got me out of my crocks and into lace-up shoes. I'm in long sleeved shirts. Now you want me to use good English?!"

the 2K i spent on charms shut down my debit card (this is shitty thing 1/5479854 of this week) and ive been trying to get it fixed since SUNDAY. argh. they kept saying itd be fixed (3 times) but 3 days in a row it was NOT fixed until i was out of cash entirely.

turns out their guy wasnt clicking some "international" flag? wtf? and now it "really really will work"? is this a professional bank? wtf is wrong with you people?

anyway if anyone wonders "why is gin so paranoid" and "why is gin so stress ridden"? well, this is my father:

rem rom child (7:40:34): hi - sorry i didnt go yet
happy briandx (7:40:43): no problem -
rem rom child (7:40:48): its really really cold out and i wanted to wait for the other stores to open so i dont have to go twice
rem rom child (7:41:01): if it doesnt work ill just calmly let you know and use my credit card or something
happy briandx (7:41:29): it should - BTW are you mad at me?
rem rom child (7:41:37): why would i be mad at you?
happy briandx (7:42:01): no idea - random stupid thought...

http://drmcninja.com/page.php?pageNum=2&issue=16 <---

yayyy me and nedroidcomics did a little back and forth guest comic for Dr. McNinja, one of my fav web comics ever!

GO READ IT AND THEN COME BACK AND TELL US HOW FUNNY (AND ALSO RUGGEDLY HANDSOME) WE ARE


Also, random question, I am making eclairs tonight to be eaten tomorrow and if I fill them with the cream filling tonight, will they keep overnight? Or will they get too mushy?

[Brer] Thanks to all the folks who stopped by for free Across Thin Ice posters, signings, and of course to part with some of their hard-earned cash in return for books (with or without smut in them). We did very respectably and had a wonderful (if very busy) time catching up with all our contributors and associates. We had dinner with ursulav and alchemist one night, dinner and podcast funs with kyellgold, K.M. Hirosaki, and the guys from Furplanet (and others I forgot to write down) another night, and then a lovely Sunday night dinner with a gaggle of legendary artists who were nice enough to include us in their Benihana run.

Thanks also to our new writer-and-sales-associate tempo321 who did such a wonderful job helping out at the table. Look for his amazing story coming up in Heat #7 (submitted and accepted BEFORE we decided to drag him along to the con) and hopefully much more in the years to come.

In between unpacking from the trip and working through the orders that came in while we were gone, I'm getting things ready for our annual Thanksgiving shindig with kyellgold and Kit Silver, blackteagan and kenket, foxfeather and mbala, and the forever-up-and-coming Derrick Dasenbrock. It should be a grand old time with food and libations galore, as well as much that is too dodgy to mention.

Up shortly on Sofawolf.com will be Ursula Vernon and Foxfeather designed Christmas Cards: $12.95 for a pack of 12. We are also still taking orders for signed and personalized copies of Kyell Gold novels through Saturday the 28th, so get them in now if you want to get that unique gift for a friend.

We hope everyone has a wonderful and relaxing Thanksgiving...

the only way i can avoid yen-dollar rate related stress is by NOT looking at it, NOT knowing what it is, and just ignoring it all together. so even though i thought my 'friends' already understood that and cared enough about me to not bring it up in front of me or treat me crappy when it upsets me ... well, i was wrong so here's more reminders and pleas :( i have anxiety disorder and i just can't deal with it any other way and thinking about it sends me into severe panic attacks (like i am doing right now). pleasepleasepleaseplease don't talk about it in front of me :( and if you do don't be shocked when i am upset by it.... and most of all don't tell me to "deal with it". nothing could possibly hurt me worse.




also: i think i just got outbid on something i was gonna buy someone for christmas.... by the people i was gonna buy it for. fucking fail.

That's right, a sale! On Thanksgiving!

STILL ICONS are normally $10, on sale for $8!
ANIMATED ICONS are normally $12, on sale for $10!







Icon buyers will receive a 100x100 LJ/FA-friendly icon as well as the 400x400 portrait version. (Additional icon sizes included for free but should be specified - 50x50 for deviantART, etc.)

I'm accepting Paypal only. Paypal is Nuts4Huskies@aol.com. Turnaround should be a couple days C:

If you would like an icon, please comment here or e-mail me (Nuts4Huskies@aol.com) with:

Your name/LJ username
Your email address
Character name and reference(s), and a little bit about their personality
The type of pose/expression you would like (or I can choose)

I can also be found at KcD@FurAffinity, Steorra-Moonstar@DeviantART or KcDStudios@BlogSpot.

I'll accept 3 slots for now, but I won't turn anyone away who really wants one. C:

SLOTS

1. Quaylak
2. TheSometimes
3.

Thanks guys!

( Examples and Information under cut!! )

**You will get updated on progress as I go, so if I get anything wrong, I can go back and fix it as many times as it takes to get it right.
**Once I am payed first I will start, but you will have your preview sketch within an hour or two of the payment.

At the moment I only accept paypal, send all payments to: parakeet16@aol.com
-If interested, comment here with a reference, or you may contact me via messenger (AIM:uberhenz|MSN:parakeet16@aol.com I am offline)

**Opening 5 slots for now. Will open more if slots are filled up.**

( Different icon examples under cut! )
1. isabella_zilla (icon) DONE
2.
3.
4.
5.

Thanks in advance for taking any interest.

Okay, I'm reading about the dust-up about Harlequin (the romance writers, y'know) starting their own vanity publishing arm*, and as I go through the comments, every now and then one jumps out at me and breaks my heart into tiny little pieces.

These comments say things like "I know you have to pay to get published..." or "Up until I read this thread, I didn't realize you didn't pay to get published."

Oh sweet god.

You are all very smart people of impeccable taste--or at least, you're reading the blog, so I like to pretend--but just on the slim chance that any of you are not quite as informed on this topic as you could be--NO NO NO NO NO A THOUSAND TIMES NO.

The publisher pays you. ALWAYS. You do not pay the publisher. EVER. It does not cost the author to publish the book. The publisher does all that. They take the book and give you money. The only place you sign the check, to paraphrase, is on the back, is over the little line that says "Endorse here."

You don't pay to get published. The publisher pays you for the privilege of taking your book. You invest time and energy and printer cartridges. The publisher always pays you.

(This is also why you don't hire an illustrator--because the publisher hires them. And pays them. That is how it works.)

It's okay if you don't know this stuff. Don't feel dumb. Publishing is weird and arcane and I still take royalty statements to my buddy Deb and go "What does this mean?" and I still don't understand half of it. You're not dumb. Much of this isn't intuitive. You don't have to take my word for it--find the author resource online of your choice. and ask questions. There is no need to be embarassed.

I have produced...uh...if we count Digger volumes...nine books through four publishers. One of the publishers is a very respectable small press, one is a starting-out-but-getting-there small press, and two are big giant scary publishers with New York offices and budgets bigger than a third world country.

All four of them pay me money. Sometimes they pay me lots of money (at least by my standards, which are quite modest) and sometimes they pay me a couple hundred bucks. The big houses can afford to pay me mondo advances, the small presses can afford to take me to dinner.** This is fine.

The point is, they all pay me. I don't pay them. Ever.

The sum total I have spent on any book I have ever written was about two bucks worth of postage to send out the initial draft of Black Dogs, over a decade ago, and I did buy a decent pen in order to sign copies of Dragonbreath. (And by "decent" I mean like 2.99 for a pair. I am not a pen snob.) Then I lost the pen.

The only times money goes the other way is if I'm buying a couple of copies of Digger--I get free copies of each, of course, but sometimes I want to sell them at cons where Sofawolf's not attending--and in this case, they just slap the wholesale price against my royalties. This is pretty normal, and the only example I can come up with off the top of my head. (Okay, no, wait, I sent a print to my editor once because she wanted a signed art print of the Nurk cover for her office. Technically I paid for that, but I didn't stuff twenties in there or anything.)

I do not pay for those big publishing runs. Authors don't. There's a little under thirty thousand copies of Dragonbreath floating around out there. Total cost to me = $0.

If somebody is telling you that the authors do pay for these, they are either misinformed or...well...you're smart wombats, you can figure out yourself why somebody might have a vested interest in believing that you give people money for this sort of thing and who might not have your best interests at heart.

Now. Self-publishing. This is something else. If you are self-publishing, then you know it up front. (If you have to ask if you're self-publishing, there are problems already.) We can talk about this later and in lots of detail if anybody wants. Self-publishing is great for what it does well. I am a big fan of self-publishing. ( I myself have work in a self-published little anthology that our local comics group puts out every year, as a print-on-demand thing. You can buy it on Lulu, it's got some nice stuff in it, a couple of the members sell the occasional copy at conventions. I didn't buy any of the wholesale copies because I don't have table space in my usual con kit. Cost to me = $0. Profit if I HAD sold them at the table = maybe a buck or two. It's a neat little thing to have, but none of us are making money on it, and it's not a publishing credit I'd take seriously. I could talk about this longer, but we're already running long.) Self-publishing is kinda like merchandising. I would self-publish a webcomic the same way that I would get a run of T-shirts printed, I'd sell them at cons or over the internet, like T-shirts, and I would expect to make approximately the same amount of money.

So. To recap. They pay us. That's how it works. If you are paying them, then something is very very wrong.

If you're self-publishing, things are a little more complicated, but you should really only be self-publishing for stuff that self-publishing is good at. If you want to be a bestselling fiction author, that's not something self-publishing is particularly good at. If somebody tells you that self-publishing is good for that and you can make zillions if you give them your manuscript and a lot of money, they are predators and need to be ridden out of town on a rail.

Vanity publishing, which is what Harlequin Horizons is offering, is a scam. They take your money by the fistful and dangle this promise that if you pay enough, you can be a Real Writer. Well, Real Writers get paid, they don't pay. Nobody is so bad a writer that they deserve to lose money for it. If you just want readers, put it on the internet, if you just want a physical copy, go to Lulu, but please, PLEASE don't believe that writers have to pay to be successful. Please.


*There are lots of posts and comment wars. The fast and amusing one is here. The gist is that they're implying heavily to the marks that this is a Real Book with Harlequin and then turning around and telling their real authors, who are Not Amused, that no, no, it's not, nobody should think that, and the books won't actually be on shelves or anything, we just kinda found a way to make money off the slush pile. It is very sad and makes me very angry.

**And in no way shape or form should you think I'm raggin' on the small presses--I am deleriously glad they exist because a big New York house wouldn't ever publish Digger, there's just not the demand. Small presses aren't small because they can't be big, it's because they publish things where demand is small, but often very passionate. I do not know how many copies of Digger have sold, but I'm sure all for volumes are less than the initial, not-very-large-by-industry-standards print-run of Nurk. That doesn't mean Digger's bad, it's just specialized.