Things I love Sundays - January 4

This video makes me want to go into animation as a career.

LITERARY TATTOOS: There is something about having a quote from your favorite book typed across your skin that just makes me smile. Maybe "birds. birds ate my face." (Chuck Palahniuk, Invisible Monsters) or a semi-colon on my wrist.

NEW MUSIC: I got an iTunes gift card for a birthday present and found Papercuts, a neo-hippie band that I now adore, and the Feathers song "Old Black Hat With a Dandelion Flower". On my iPod, I found Caribou's "Hello Hammerheads" and Rock City's Obama version of "Paper Planes".

JANOWRIMO: 50K words in a month. Stories about road trips and love and dogs pissing out windows. It's good fun and keeps me focused on writing every day.

MIRROR'S EDGE: The EA Games new video game, Mirror's Edge, completely blows me away. The graphics, the heart-exploding pace, the running, jumping, leap-of-Faith-ing. Amazing. I could play it forever.

DISNEY RETRO PINUPS: By Amy Mebberson.


BRAILLE "TATTOOS": They are "implants creating embossed text in braille placed under skin, can be read by touch / stroke by blind people." Really cool stuff on that website, if you search around. 

wordstock 3 - wordstock three - wordstock tres

I know I'm the second-worst blogger ever (thanks for being first, Laura.)

However, I feel obligated to share this and this and this with you for my own bragging benefit. I am now officially published!

I now have eight copies of my book in my possession. I bought them at the Wordstock festival in Portland on the weekend of my birthday at the Franklin, Beedle & Associates Publishing booth. When my mom and I went to the cashier (Jim Leisy, who originally started the Short Fiction Competition) to buy our copies, he remarked, "Wow, you sure are buying a lot of these."

My mom replied, "Well, my daughter is a finalist."

The entire booth erupted. "This is Danya?!" "Danya, we think you have so much potential!" "I loved your story!"A judge from the competition was there and he told me that he received my story because another judge had put it through to him as the winner of ten stories he had read.

It was amazing, it was incredible, it was what I want to do for the rest of my life.

wordstock 2 - stock de mot - wortlager

after about two months of insanity, i have checked my email and received a letter from wordstock, the annual literary festival in portland, congratulating me on being one of the ten finalists! i already have secured a place in the wordstock 10, an anthology that will be available at the festival, by being a finalist, but i have to wait until november to hear the final word.

i am ecstatic. wish me luck!

wordstock - stock de mot - wortlager

even with my frenzied pace on completing my online courses, annotating "extremely loud and incredibly close", and my computer going "kablooie" (yes, i have been reading "calvin and hobbes" as of late) every nine and a half minutes, i've managed to find the time to make one of my stories compatible with the wordstock (portland's annual book festival) contest requirements without wrecking it, and so i'm sending it in.

seeing that it's pretty unlikely that some publisher will see my work in my high school's literary magazine and immediately give me a book contract, i've been taking my writing and its chance to be published much more seriously. therefore, i'm sending in my best piece.

wish me luck!