For Amber’s Mom on her birthday

Good day friends! I’ve been very busy with my novel, but I did find time to fill a special order for Amber, my guitarist’s awesome mom. Her requirements were simple: green, pink, black, mostly green and beautiful. I’m calling it my homage to Alexander Calder (famous for his mobiles and other sculpture, but I like his jewelry best). Found a fantastic book of it at the library. I highly recommend it.

I finally got to use my hammer and tiny anvil on the spirals for the drops, flattening them out. Stones used: teardrops are chrysoprase, flat rounds are malachite, small black stones are black jade, lighter stone beads are rose quartz. You will also see pink pearls and crystal. A couple black crystals in there, too.

Well, I’m terribly pleased with it. Feel free to let me know what you think!

My NaNoWriMo Progress: 41004 words. 5 days to go! What’s next? NaNoFiMo and NaNoEdMo (National Novel Finishing Month if I need it and National Novel Editing Month). I can’t wait!

Off to Chi Town

That’s right. I’m going to be in Chicago until the 13th. If you place an order, I’ll take care of it as soon as I return.

Stay out of trouble while I’m gone!

NaNoWriMo progress: 10386 words, over 20% to the goal of 50K.

What is she up to?

Hi family, friends and fans,

I know! How lazy am I not to do any jewelry posts in FOREVER! Now that the costume frenzy for Halloween is over I might have time. But it’s November and I have another distraction. I have joined NaNoWriMo.org (that’s National Novel Writing Month). That’s right, I’m finally doing it. I took a bunch of creative writing courses and read enough books to kinda know what I’m doing. Best yet, I’ve already been writing one in my head for years! Yeah, all those times you were trying to get my attention while I was staring off into space. Now you know. I was somewhere else. I was in my novel.

Note: while participating in NaNoWriMo, I will still be filling orders on the website. My clients will not be ignored!

It’s an adventure novel set after the apocalypse (I’ll write my contemporary novel next year). It’s going to be a super draft by the end that I’ll be editing for years until I’m satisfied with it. Then maybe I’ll publish, but I doubt it.

In order to prepare for this ordeal, I didn’t read any fiction for 6 months to make sure I wouldn’t absorb anyone’s writing style (there is this one author who take different styles from some very famous authors; it made me so mad that I wrote him a letter asking him to learn how to write before he published anymore books–I don’t want to be a hypocrite). I’m also reading books assigned from a class I had to drop out of when there was too much on my plate one quarter; A Natural History of the Senses by Diane Ackerman. I haven’t gotten to Bird by Bird yet. Morgan has that one. I think my biological training is great for writing setting descriptions; there will be some nerdy and very realistic ecology. I’ve been getting Word of the Day from Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary in my old hotmail account since 2004 and saving all of them! One of my challenges; not to use the work Okay.

The meat. I need to write 50K by midnight Nov. 30, then I will “win” NaNoWriMo. I just wrote about 350 words in ten minutes. I wish I could do that with my story every day. Right now I’m at 7380, almost 15% to the goal. Cups of coffee today: 1. Wish me luck!