Toothache...

So I had a cold over the last week. Nothing huge, I felt like crap for a few days, but I was functioning... No big deal. The last day and a half, my tooth started bothering me. I chalked it up to being related to the sinus congestion... I was wrong. It turns out that I have a tooth that is abscessed.
You would think that something as small and stupid as a tooth wouldn't knock you on your ass, but it sucks. A trip to the ER for heavy duty antibiotics that are making me puke, percocet that barely takes the edge off the maddening pain... It's a fuckin' TOOTH for cryin' out loud, but here I am, laid out on my ASS prayin' for something...
So Friday night, I drove the kids up to their dad's for the weekend. They're having a blast... Saturday morning, at about 3 AM, I wake up to a screaming pain in my mouth. It hurt from my ear all the way down my jaw, so I started popping advil. I got nothing. Lucky was on duty so I decided to call him so that I could whine about the owie. It was sweet. He let me. AN hour later, he's at the door, insisting that he take me to the hospital.
So I go, kicking and screaming, (no not really)and the ER doc doses me full of antibiotics and a whole mess of painkillers, then prescribes gigantic horse pills for both the infection in my tooth and for the debilitating pain. (She was a hoot! ) A couple of hours later, after we pick up the script at the local 24hour CVS, he tucks me into bed where I decided that I would empty the contents of my stomach into the porcelain altar. I gingerly brushed my teeth and still fuzzy from pain meds, I forced myself to take another antibiotic and half a painkiller and fall fitfully asleep.
Some few hours later, Lucky came back to take care of the dog and watch stupid movies with me, hold my hand, brush my hair, rub my feet, scratch my back, bring me tea, go out and get me food, held my hair while I puked it all up, tried to comfort me, cut my pills, make sure that he woke me to take my meds at the right time throughout the night, and hold me while I whined and complained about how much I hurt and do anything and everything to take care of me short of taking on the pain for me, which I know he would have if he could and didn't leave my side, except to walk the dog and pick up takeout food.
With the antibiotics finally kicking in and alleviating the swelling in one half of my lower jaw and the side of my face, noms that he fed me, and my not throwing up because of the meds, I'm feeling better. I have to say that despite it was the suckiest 36 hours of my life, it also wasn't.
Thank you so much for taking such good care of me, Puppy Guts. I love you too...

I need a job...

So, in another moment of contemplation, I came to the conclusion that I need to find another means of income. A published author makes no money really and working for my dad is proving to be more stressful than its worth.
Would I like to be the next J.K. Rowling? Hell yeah I would! IS it going to happen? Pfft! No! I think my goals on this were much more realistic than the next guy's. My goal was just to be able to say, "Yeah, I did it... This one's for you, kiddos! Mommy wrote y'all a book!" and for the most part, that whole process is done. Come summertime, I will be able to slap down a copy in front of each of them and say, "There you go!"
The chances of being the next multi gojillionaire author is slim to none. I would stand a better chance trying to win lotto. Whatever... I can guarantee that there are NO sparkly vampires and NO teenage girls trapped in a love triangle (hmm... necrophilia or beastiality... Decisions, decisions...). That's probably the reason WHY I'll never make it... It's all about the zombies, werewolves and vampires now... Shit!

So... I made changes of my own...

There are those that I asked to read through the book and I appreciated their input. The there are those who I didn't and... Well, not so much in the appreciation department. I get that it's their JOB to tell me what's wrong and stuff, but at least the people who I asked were nice enough to just point it out and say something constructive instead of pointing, laughing and making me sit in the corner... Okay, maybe they didn't make me go sit in a corner, but still.
I went through the book on my own and made a few changes here and there... Just to get everything to flow a little better. Little bits here, little bits there... The thing was already 292 pages and with the little bits I added, now it's 293 pages. Whatever...
In the process, I know that there are going to be things that are cut, things that are changed, things that are rearranged... Etc.. I get it, but there are things that I'm going to change too... DEAL WITH IT! Just sayin'...

OMG! I found what I want my next laptop to look like...

I'm back... Kind of...

After a little hiatus, I have to say, blogging is much easier than writing a whole friggin' book....
I'm still going through the editing process with the book, which will be followed by the everything else process before something else happens, then it goes through something else... Graphic something or another with the design something, an author proof something and other stuff before something else happens... But the hard part is over.... Or so I'm told...
<Sigh...> It's stuff and things all over again... And I have no idea what's going on... I think I fried my tiny little mind.
But at the end of the day, I can say: DEADLINE MET, BABY!

Thanks y'all!

I would like to take this opportunity to thank the people in my life who have been so patient and understanding while I went through the process of deciphering my own chicken scratch and five year old alien shorthand. I still don’t know what half of those symbols were (hieroglyphics?) and I still think “that phrase” may have been in Swahili… Thanks for keeping my spirits up and forcing me back on track when I slacked off and Facebooked when I should have been working! And thanks for not listening to my whining and complaining and making me keep on going when all I wanted to do was quit…. Even though I was crying and begging and pleading for mercy and threatening to file a restraining order while brandishing the pink fluffy pen of doom…

A few “props” to certain people who allowed me to use their concepts and ideas in the storytelling:

Richard Dimitri, creator of Senshido. A concept displayed through some parts of this book. (“It even works on monsters!”  “Seriously?”) See Rich? I did some. Now you go do some too!

For more info on Senshido, please contact Richard at:
Senshido International
P.O. Box 3133
Jasper, Alberta
T0E1E0 Canada
(514)-500-2535
http://senshidointernational.blogspot.com/
http://www.senshido.com/

Chris Adams, owner of Specter Tactical. For training and “technical advisor stuff”, because I’ve got something better than “Stuff was happening. <Describe stuff> After the described stuff, with the things <describe things>, there has to be a WOO HOO! before <Slap!> The Woo Hoo goes along with the stuff that happened with the thing. Make sure it's all WHOA!”, (an actual line in the original manuscript…) Yeah… Because, wow… When the words escaped me, yeah… Wow…

For more info, please contact Chris at:

SPECTER SERVICES, LLC
Military & Law Enforcement Tactical Training
60 River Road
East Haddam, CT 06423

860-908-0500
Email: chrisa2@earthlink.net

http://www.spectertactical.com

My friends, S., P., C., F., C.S., M.F., and T. who saw me through a lot of frustration. You didn’t make it better, but saw me through it anyway…

Bobby, thanks for reading through and helping to correct my REALLY GOOD grammar and other stuff like that. Sorry I subjected you to it… I know. Believe me… I know…

Bacon, for all the yummy goodness you provided and nourishing me with your tasty deliciousness and mighty bacon-y awesomeness.

And of course, thanks Otis, for keeping me amused and my feet warm and the room constantly smelling like wet dog… Well, maybe not so much on the last one…

I'll be back...

With the deadline looming, I'm going offline for a few... Things I have to iron out and little time to do it and all... I'll be back, I promise... I'm sittin' in my thinkin' chair right now... Unfortunately for me, the intelligence left the building and I'm left floundering in plain inane and idiotic WOO HOO! YAY! So, off I go... But I will return!

My "Official" Author Bio Page...

Mia Tanaka is a short, quirky, funny looking woman who is tolerated by her four wonderful children, her loving soulmate and her equally short, equally quirky and funny looking dog, without any one of whom which, would lead her to be a miserable, short, quirky, funny looking woman. Ms. Tanaka is well read (mostly in tabloid magazines and trash novels) and well traveled (to the kitchen and back to the desk several times during the “work day”) and is well versed in many languages (but only enough to get take out at various ethnic restaurants.)

When she is not toiling away at the computer trying hard to coherently string together enough words to make complete sentences, Mia can be found slacking off and using her social networking page, blogging about various subjects ranging from politics to navel lint (literally…), or outside playing with her children.

Mia is finding that writing about herself in the third person for an author biography is very strange and has no idea what to write about… How about this: She once got bitten by a frog. A rather rare occurrence? Um… No?

…I was poking a frog in the head with my finger and it bit me...I'm a frog poker... I'm a frog poker that got bit by a frog...

Stuff with things...

In doing the rewrite/ re-edit/ draft edit... All sorts of other crap on the manuscript that I have to get to the publisher in a couple of weeks, I have noticed that on the SUPER MEGA rough draft, I was a little less than... Thorough in my writing... It turns out that in my haste to get the ideas down on paper, I was less than descriptive and wordy than I should have been... A fine example:
Stuff was happening. <Describe stuff.> After the described stuff, with the things <describe things>, there has to be a WOO HOO! before <Slap!> The Woo Hoo goes along with the stuff that happened with the thing. Make sure it's all WHOA! Then there are some squiggly lines, a bunch of stick figures and some small circles, something that may be Swahili or Japanese (your guess is as good as mine at this point...), and of course, all in the chicken scratch that I call my handwriting.
Exhaustion has been the secret decoding device as it seems, it all makes sense when I am exhausted. The next day however, trying to read over the typed translations of the scrawlings that look more like an EKG reading during defib than actual words in addition to the hieroglyphics of a two year old, brain damaged chimpanzee, well... Let's just say my friends "shit, piss, cunt fuck, cock sucker, mother fucker and tits" have all come in very handy.
The end result? Well, let's just say, the story itself has become a whole new creation and has taken a life of it's own and it is very angry with me for whatever reason and it is trying to kill me. It taunts me and it teases me in my waking hours and haunts me when I sleep... Okay... I may be over exaggerating, but still, I can't wait to be done... So that I can get started on the second one... And THAT set of binders and notebooks and scrap pieces of paper looks worse than this one... Oh boy...   :s

Lost in thought...

There are just certain times of the day that I get lost in thought. It's the most random thing... I could be thinking about what I'm going to make for dinner and all of a sudden I go from that to contemplating navel lint or researching and developing a dust bunny breeding program... Okay. Maybe it's not "all of a sudden"... Maybe my train of thought goes from the subject of dinner to not being too hungry and wondering why... Maybe from there the thoughts wander to things that make me lose my appetite. I start listing things from certain smells or sights, to the thought of something that seems icky to me... From there I might meander into the realm of other icky things like worms and slimy things and make myself shudder at the thought of the feel and texture of sticking my hands into a tub of worms or something slimy and then laugh about it. Then have a conversation with myself about whether doing that was a quirk of mine or just something that falls into the realm of the silliness that seems to fill my life at times. From there we traverse the world of inane. That can be anything from wondering why we call 8 an eight to why I like the word "bellybutton" so much... (It's such a fun word to say... Bellybutton... Tee hee hee...) Flabammo! Bellybutton lint. Then the similarities of bellybutton lint and dust bunnies. (How do they get there?) Then how "dust bunny" sounds so friggin' cute. Then the wanting to breed something cute sounding like "dust bunnies"...
Deep thoughts? Perhaps not. Regardless, there are several minutes of any given day that intelligence takes its leave and leaves me to contemplate the stupid stuff. <Sigh!> Yeah... It IS a quirk... Damn!

Nyaaaaaaaaagofuckyerself!

"Nyaaaaaaaaagofuckyerself!" is probably the most unintelligent comeback, but I have to admit, sometimes it's just so fitting... There are just certain times when logic just doesn't work or the words just seem to escape me or there isn't enough time to be as verbally expressive as I'd like to be or nothing more really can be said, but something needs to be said anyway... Traffic incidents are the most common for me. Getting cut off, the car in front of me brakes for no apparent reason or the car in front of me just doesn't GO... It's just a thing. Nyaaaaaaaaaagofuckyerself seems to work well...