My Happy Place

I can't believe I'm posting this. It's still so surreal to me.

I'm moving! It has been my dream for years now to live in the mountains. Lucky for me this has been a shared dream; Clint has always wanted this too. We've done things in these last few years to make our lives in the desert more tolerable, like upgrading the interior of our home, putting in the pool, and so on, but in the end it all feels like putting lipstick on a pig. No matter how pretty we make this place, we still live in the desert, with scorching temperatures and blowing dust and people who simply don't take pride in their community. 

Don't get me wrong, I have no regrets over the work we've put into our house. The pool especially, because it has given us a reprieve from the oppressive desert heat for three summers now, and it's going to be a huge selling feature for our house. Likewise everything else we've added will increase our home's value. And honestly, we've had happy lives here. I grew up in the desert and it will always feel like home to me. But, for lack of a less corny way of saying it, my heart is happiest in the forest. I can't even describe the level of calm I feel when I'm nestled into trees. It's weird, right?...the different settings that bring serenity to different people? Your happy place might be the beach, the calming waves of the ocean. Or maybe it's open pastures...a rambling farm house with wide green spaces reaching for the horizon. In the same way, mine is the mountains, and no matter how much work I put into my current home, I just can't shake the desire for towering trees and fresh piney fragrances. So Clint and I decided to finally get serious about looking for a property up there (other factors played into this decision, but I'll just leave it at this for now). We ended up spending the first half of summer looking at land--even putting an offer on one parcel--thinking we'd build a home. But it turns out that the cost to build a home in the mountains is so astronomical that we'd be upside-down on our mortgage before we even moved into our new home. I always thought building a house was cheaper than buying, but I couldn't have been more wrong.

So after spending a month haggling and dreaming, we decided we just couldn't do it. This brought us to option #2, purchasing an already existing home. The tricky part of this plan is that mountain homes are...well, downright weird. Most are three stories with very compartmentalized rooms and bizarre floor plans. For example, one house we walked into had a front door that went straight into the kitchen. There was one other front door entrance on the lower level that went through the master bedroom. So for guests, I'd have a choice: Do I want them to see my dirty dishes or my dirty underwear? (Not that mine are dirty, of course, because anything coming out of me is pure sugar and sunshine). Hmmm. *scratches head*. Another house was loaded with mysterious stairs going into dark places with lots of crevices and crannies...it was like the Winchester House spawned an evil little lovechild. Some of the more "normal" floor plans in the mountains feature split levels, where you walk into a little platform and have to immediately decide whether you're going upstairs or down. I can't even entertain houses like this. It's like getting ready to enter an elevator and being greeted with, well, half the elevator. (I am the analogy queen!). 

No one is at fault for these bizarre floor plans, it's just that you're dealing with homes that are either built into the mountain or hanging off a cliff, so home-builders are forced to get super creative with their floor plans and utilize every bit of space they have available. And honestly, it turns out that looking at quirky mountain homes is a ton of fun. House hunting in the desert is pretty boring. "Here's another ranch...yep, another track home...oh look at that, another ranch...). But in the mountains, you never know what to expect when you walk through the front door. The exclamations from my kids ranged anywhere from "There's for sure a dead body buried over here" to "I call dibs on that dark basement room from the pits of hell!" (May have tweaked their wording a little). Needless to say, I made my peace with the fact that there was no way we were going to get a "normal" home. So our goal was simply to find as close to normal as possible. 

Enter: This house. It was love at first sight.

Front patio

Side-view of house

Street-view - One driveway goes to the carport, the other to the garage

Street view #2

Carport

Side-view of garage and studio apartment

My future writing lair and art studio! Or as Clint calls it, my she-shed.

Two car garage (rare in the mountains) with studio apartment above.
Apartment has one bedroom, a kitchenette, and a bathroom.

So there you have it. I'm sure I'll be posting more in the coming weeks, if I have time to breathe. Everything is happening so fast. Clint and I will be scrambling this month to get our current house cleaned out, repairs made, etc., so we can put it on the market. I guess I'm supposed to be packing too, but I just can't. While I have no problem imagining moving into the new house, I can't picture myself moving out of this house. So I need to wait a little longer for all of this to sink in before I can get my butt packing.

Freshly Mowed Grass Diet

Trying to support my hubby who--for health reasons--must drastically cut back his meat intake, I watched a few clips from a documentary last week called Forks over Knives. Even though I saw only a smidgen of the film, I decided I can never eat meat again.

Then I watched a documentary called What the Health. Afterwards I determined I can never eat eggs or dairy again.

Then I watched a documentary called That Sugar Film, and determined that I can never eat refined sugars again.

So this leaves...grass. I am now on the Freshly Mowed Grass Diet. Maybe I can throw some wood chips in there too when I need some extra bulk.

When it comes to all of the existing research out there regarding food, I can't possibly listen to it all. I'll either A) Starve, or B) Eat what I want but feel like I'm slowly killing myself. So I have to determine which pieces of information regarding food speak to me the most. And for me, it's the inhumane treatment and unethical processing of animals. It's like something from a dystopian horror flick. I won't get on that soap box right now, I'll just sum up by saying I can't get myself to support the American meat industry anymore.

So I've decided to give up meat. RIP, extra crispy KFC. Goodbye, barbecue ribs on the 4th of July. *cries*. For health reasons I'm also drastically cutting down on dairy too.

So I guess I'm vegetarian with a sprinkle of vegan?

Ugh. Just...no.

Anyway, other than one craving for pepperoni that hit me last Friday night and massive dairy withdrawals, it's going well so far! I haven't cheated even once. *knocks on wood*. Clint's embracing all of this too and preparing a lot of our meals, which makes it easier to stick with.

I'm sharing this decision here because it helps keep me grounded, but otherwise I plan to keep it on the down-low as much as possible. Mainly because I've been perpetually annoyed by vegetarians and vegans in the past who are really 'loud' about their lifestyle choice and constantly expect special accommodations made for them. There's no way I will do that. I've already been out to eat with family several times and it was easy to find meat-free options on the menu without creating a hoopla over it. 

But my other motive for being quiet about the whole thing is I come from an extended family of hearty meat-eaters that really have no use for vegetarians, so there's sort of a stigma attached to that word. Shoot, I myself own a hunting dog (well technically George is Clint's dog, but you get my point). I'm not the kind of person you would associate with vegetarianism. Eventually the people in my world will find out--it's not my intention to keep it a secret--I simply have no desire to advertise it.

Okay, I'm off to make some steamed veggies and roasted sadness for dinner.

Shorter Posts?

And mine is one of them. I need to write in this thing. This used to be my little online journal. I loved writing here. I'm trying to remember when that feeling went away, when the impulse to record things fled. 

Maybe I'll try shorter entries, just to get back into the habit again. I need to figure this out, because my URL is up for renewal and I can't justify repurchasing it when I'm leaving this poor blog out in the cold and rain. 

So in the spirit of this idea, I'm going to end this blog post now.

Chasing Echoes: Coming Soon to a Classroom Near You (or at Least Near Me)

Fact: The longer a person goes without writing a blog post, the harder it gets to write a dang post. 

That being said, here are some updates!

I haven't written anything worth mentioning in...forever. I did add a new chapter to Black Lilies, but I ended up scrapping half of it. So my "Why I'm not Writing a Sequel" post is still very much in effect. 

I still teach middle-school, by the way. And it still leaves me feeling like Soggy everyday. 

But I haven't been completely stagnant. I just finished creating a literature unit for Chasing Echoes. And it's beautiful! Here it is:

It's not the outside that's beautiful, it's the inside. Just like an ideal human being. Or a book that wasn't judged by its cover. Or...er...okay, back to the literature guide. I originally started creating it because an 8th grade teacher on my campus purchased a class set of my novel with grant money she received, and asked me for curriculum. But now my school just purchased a class set of my novel (40 books) for ME. Long story short, I get to teach my own book next year! This sort of propelled me to finishing this curriculum. It's now available on Amazon for $5.38 for those who want the "nice" workbook, but I've decided to have the PDF available for free. It seems silly to try to profit from learning material related to my novel.

Oh, another cool update: My daughter and I created a children's book titled Jacob Jax and the Watermelon Tree...my first (and likely only) children's book. I'll write more about that in a future post. For now I'll just say that it's all finished, we're just in the throes of publishing-insanity with this one. There are a lot more hoops to jump through for children's lit than YA. This book has been both a sweet little delight and a stinging bull thorn in my heel (I'm trying to avoid saying 'pain in my ass'). 

That's it for project updates. Unless art counts? If so, here's my latest:

Cheshire Cat for Mom

Charcoal/Pastel on 18x24 charcoal paper

This is the look I have plastered on my face during a typical workday. A grin frozen somewhere between bewilderment and mania.

Dragon Rose

Dragon Rose by Christine Pope
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I enjoyed Dragon Rose, but I did come out of it feeling like I was a little led-on by a synopsis that sounded darker and more exciting than the story actually turned out to be. The blurb on the back isn't misleading at all, it's just that the meat of the story doesn't really start happening until the last 15-20% of the novel. The first 80% features an optimistic Rhyanne adjusting to her new life at Black's Keep.

Between Pope's beautiful world building and an irresistibly compelling storyline, I struggled to put down the novel in the beginning. But after awhile, the story started to get a little tedious and repetitive. Every day seemed to feature the same events for Rhyanne: Wake up, choose in detail what dress to wear, eat breakfast, paint, eat lunch, paint some more, eat dinner with Theron, experience disturbing dreams at night, rinse and repeat. If there was some progression between her and Theron, either emotionally or physically, that would have lent itself to a more engrossing story. But she and her cursed husband never move forward in their relationship until the very end. I'm a huge fan of slow-burning romances, but when it's this agonizingly slow it's not much more exciting than watching grass grow.

I was really craving more from Theron. In some ways I liked his gentleness, but he was almost too mild-mannered and passive. I felt like Pope was playing it too safe with his character. Sometimes Theron's politeness bordered on dull indifference. (view spoiler)[Like when Rhyanne slips into a two-week fugue, he doesn't visit her bedside. Rhyanne gives him mental kudos for coming to her bedroom door, but I'm sorry--that's not much of a gesture when, as far as he's concerned, she's probably dying. (hide spoiler)] Plus his lack of involvement in Rhyanne's daily activities made for a lot of missed opportunities from the reader's point of view. It would have been awesome to have Theron find Rhyanne at the graveyard and witness that whole volatile exchange. Or for Theron to follow Rhyanne to the previous bride's chamber and flounder to explain why that bride wrote down such chilling words. Shoot, it would have been awesome to have Theron burst into Rhyanne's chamber even once in the story just because he couldn't stop thinking about her. By the end of the novel it's clear why Theron kept Rhyanne at bay, but it's still frustrating, and in my opinion, unnecessary. The tension in the novel would have been much more heightened if Rhyanne had brought out the selfish parts of Theron. He was already "nice" with his other brides, Rhyanne should have been the one to drive him to madness and make him forego his altruistic motives. He should have demanded to spend more time with her and constantly tried to be closer to her, and then, knowing the costs, been tormented by his obsession. Ultimately, Theron does such a good job pretending not to care about Rhyanne that even now, having finished the book, I'm still convinced that he isn't overly interested in her.

Pope does a wonderful (though rushed) job of tying all loose ends by the end of the novel, which is something I greatly appreciate. And I really love Rhyanne's character, and Theron's, when you take out the mild-manneredness aspect. Overall I enjoyed the book a lot, hence the four stars and way-too-long-review (I only ramble like this when a book has left an impression on me). I just feel like the author missed some great opportunities to turn this novel from a good little read to an unforgettable one.

Cover Reveal - No Rest for the Wicked

I know I haven't been on my blog in a bazillion years (other than to complain about my blog virus woes), but this occasion warrants me to rain a little sunshine on my post-drought. I'm thrilled to be amongst the few who gets to reveal the gorgeous new book cover for No Rest for the Wicked, the debut novel from the amazing and talented author Krystal Jane Ruin!

Without further ado, check out this beauty...

Back of the Book Blurb

Since her release from the psychiatric facility and into the smothering guardianship of her aunt, twenty-one-year-old psychic Tatum Torabi has been sneaking away to sell curses and plagues in the underground, a black market known for illegal and supernatural wares. 

Tatum’s unique abilities catch the attention of a hella-creepy trash peddler who offers her a job tracking down people who owe his boss “a favor.” She couldn’t be less interested, but when she refuses, the company forces her compliance by threatening the lives of the only family she has left. 

Because tracking barely scratches the surface of what they really want from her. There’s a reason Tatum is so good at making curses, and they want her to use those skills for a much darker purpose.

May 10

Click here to pre-order from Amazon

Click here to add to Goodreads

About the Author

Krystal Jane Ruin is the author of supernatural and paranormal fiction living in the Tennessee Valley. She can often be found knee deep in Sudoku and other puzzles, in a Youtube hole, or blogging about books, writing, and random things. For updates from Krystal, visit here:

Blog: The Narcissistic Rose

Twitter: @planetkrystal

Goodreads: Goodreads Author Krystal Jane Ruin

Facebook: Author Krystal Jane Ruin

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Nasty Little Widget

My blog virus is gone! It only took...well...a year to get rid of it. The virus was hidden in the html code of my Twitter fanbox widget. Sneaky, sneaky. So that thing is gone now and my blog is all fat and healthy.

I'm not writing a real post right now. I just wanted to get on here and say that my blog is alive again. Hopefully I'm not bringing it to life only to force it to suffer a longer death due to post-starvation. But you know me. That's probably exactly what I'm doing.

Alive!