A Rising Moon and Coxhall Gardens

The first pic is of the moon rising over the field behind the house. I loved how bright it was and the colors of the clouds.

The rest of the pictures are from a little park in Carmel, IN called Coxhall Gardens. We visited this weekend.

This is one of a pair of twin bell towers. There was one on each end of the park.

Just beyond that concrete doughnut is a fence that features poorly rendered naked people, and beyond that fence is an amphitheatre. We couldn't go all the way into the amphitheatre because it was rented for a wedding. This part was supposed to be closed as well. There was actually a do not enter sign behind me when I took this. I'm a rebel like that.

This is as far into the ampitheatre as we got.

Aquatic Flora

Gratuitous bee on flower shot.

This is the children's garden. It was so cute! This section was a little village. I would like to see it in summertime when the flowers are in full bloom.

I took this picture when we first arrived. I thought the view was cool.

TTFN
_________________________
Hey, want some free reading? Check out the fiction freebie page on this very blog!
There you shall find links to two free ebooks on Smashwords and novel excerpts on Scribd.

Other places to find me:
http://www.LeaRyan.com/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/LeaRyan1

movie twofer

There were two movies this weekend! I have a book I’m trying to finish, so this is going to be quick.

Toll Hunter

From IMDB - “A group of students investigates a series of mysterious bear killings, but learns that there are much more dangerous things going on. They start to follow a mysterious hunter, learning that he is actually a troll hunter. “
Norwegian flick with subtitles. They went for a Blair Witch feel and did a decent job of pulling it off. The special effects were AMAZING. If you have a surround sound system, turn that thing UP when watching this movie.

I have a significant complaint – not enough parts with trolls. Most of the movie was blah-blah and walking around woods. As far as story goes, not bad, not great.

Troll Hunter gets a C.

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Paul

Also from IMDB – “Two British comic-book geeks traveling across the U.S. encounter an alien outside Area 51.”

Paul is a cute comedy that stars Nick Frost and Simon Pegg and several other well-known stars. Seth Rogen is the voice of the alien.

The Brits find the alien and agree to take him to a spot where he can get picked up by his people. They encounter various people who serve as obstacles along the way – a men in black kind of guy, super religious wackadoodles, and rednecks.

Paul is very funny and entertaining. There is a fair amount of action and many geek culture references, which is always a plus in my book. Paul gets a B+.

_________________________
Hey, want some free reading? Check out the fiction freebie page on this very blog!
There you shall find links to two free ebooks on Smashwords and novel excerpts on Scribd.

Other places to find me:
http://www.LeaRyan.com/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/LeaRyan1

friday bloggin'

Glorious Friday! I am so excited to be heading into the weekend. The day was warm when I got off work. We had sunshine too!

Here is what the field behind my house looks like right now. Pretties!

I need need need to finish AnnaBeth 2!!! Like yesterday, like 10 minutes ago. I am going to be writing my ass off the next week or two to finish it.

I would like to post at least the first few chapters of the remix project up on a couple of writing feedback websites before November starts. That means I need to finish the AB2 rough draft and read through the beginning remix chapters in a very short period of time.

So this weekend, there will be no animation. There might be a little Journey Reader working. Mostly, there will be a lot of writing. I swear it.

AnnaBeth2 word count update: 67738

lookie, books!

Sometimes I read this blog that consists mainly of showing what’s in peoples’ closets. These are artists and fashion people, not us ordinary folk. They pose in their favorite (usually weird) outfits and sometimes bits of their apartments or houses are included. The photographer also likes to show the books on their shelves. This is usually whatever they would like to be seen reading, that’s my take on it at least.

So today I’m sharing a snippet from my bookshelf. These aren’t necessarily look-how-smart-I-am books. They were just selections that I found interesting for one reason or another. Here is the pic.



The book on top is Traitor’s Purse, by Margaret Allingham, 1942 edition. I bought this book at a library book sale for $1. The 1958 edition is currently listed on Amazon for $82.69. How much do I like this book again? Lol. I chose this book at the sale solely based on the freakishly awesome binding. It’s in such good condition that I did end up reading it and it is very, very good.

Book number 2 is What Your Hands Reveal, by Jo Sheridan, 1973. My mom gave me this book. I’m not sure where she got it. It’s about palm reading. I’m not sure why I hang onto it. I pick it up and read some of it every once in a while, but then I am distracted by something shiny and I walk away. I really like the cover of this book, which you can view at the link below if you so desire.

http://www.amazon.com/What-Your-Hands-Reveal-Sheridan/dp/B0047AO9AG/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1317858237&sr=1-1

Book 3 is also from mommy dearest. The Great Dinosaur Mystery Solved! By Ken Ham. Once upon a time, my mother dated an overly enthusiastic religious man. He didn’t believe in evolution or gay people. When he and my mother broke up, he left behind some freaky religious books. I took a couple of them to keep as curiosities. I haven’t read through the whole thing but I believe this book is intended to help religious people come to grips with the existence of dinosaurs.

The next book down is The Mustang Buyer’s Guide. I bought this book from a bookstore when I was about 13 years old. To say that I heart Mustangs is an understatement. I did finally get one last year. It’s a sweet ass black and white 2007 pony.

Book number 5 has part of the title concealed by tape that I have used to reassemble this book. I think this is another one from mommy dearest. The title is Baby Names and Announcements. I sometimes use this book to choose names for characters in my stories and books. It lists names, meanings, and cultures of origin.

Book 6 is Knitting with Dog Hair by Kendall Crolius and Anne Montgomery. Do I knit with dog hair? Heck no. My dog smells like a dead fish. I would rather wear a garbage bag. I bought this book at a library sale because it made me laugh. Like the dinosaur book, it is also a curiosity.

Book 7 = Graphic Design by Michael Bierut. I started reading this book like 6 months ago and put it down. I should finish it some day.

Book 8 – Essential Dali. I LOVE Salvador Dali. What a brilliant eccentric amazing artist. He is probably my favorite.

That’s it for now.

_________________________
Hey, want some free reading? Check out the fiction freebie page on this very blog!
There you shall find links to two free ebooks on Smashwords and novel excerpts on Scribd.

Other places to find me:
http://www.LeaRyan.com/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/LeaRyan1

movie: Priest

Today was really tiring. I had a dentist appointment first thing. I associate the dentist with pain and lectures about flossing. It’s not my favorite place to visit. The children were with me too. I was there for a really long time. Then, on the way to work, my new phone arrived! Woo! So I swung by the house to pick that up and get it activated. I’m going to work on getting it set up after I jump off here.

Anyway, movie.

Priest.

I’m grabbing the synop from IMDB because I’m rushing.

“PRIEST, a post-apocalyptic sci-fi thriller, is set in an alternate world -- one ravaged by centuries of war between man and vampires. The story revolves around a legendary Warrior Priest from the last Vampire War who now lives in obscurity among the other downtrodden human inhabitants in walled-in dystopian cities ruled by the Church. When his niece is abducted by a murderous pack of vampires, Priest breaks his sacred vows to venture out on a quest to find her before they turn her into one of them. He is joined on his crusade by his niece's boyfriend, a trigger-fingered young wasteland sheriff, and a former Warrior Priestess who possesses otherworldly fighting skills.”

The action was great. Fighting was Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon style, though not quite to that extreme. The vampires were very creepy. They didn’t even look human. They reminded me of the Lickers from Resident Evil. They had no eyes and large fang-filled mouths.

Priest was like The Book of Eli meets Underworld. I think this was one of those movies that tried to cram too much story into too short a time. The characters weren’t well developed, especially the main character.

Priest was okay. It gets a C+.

_________________________
Hey, want some free reading? Check out the fiction freebie page on this very blog!
There you shall find links to two free ebooks on Smashwords and novel excerpts on Scribd.

Other places to find me:
http://www.LeaRyan.com/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/LeaRyan1

stuff

I need to go into hiding with my laptop. I can't seem to finish this freakin' book! I'm not blocked or anything. I just can't seem to get a really good run of working time.

AnnaBeth 2 word count update – 63089

I will probably finish within the next month or so if I can stay productive.

Off that subject, I got to order a new phone! I am moving from Blackberry to Droid.

I like the Blackberry ok, but it suffers from some significant flaws. Web browsing capabilities are limited. It can’t see flash websites. The camera on it is probably the worst camera I've ever had on a phone before. As you might have noticed if you read the blog, I really like to take pictures, so that's a problem for me. I also don't like how small the screen is.

My husband has an android phone and I swear it can do just about anything you would want to do with a phone. He can even watch netflix on it, which is freakin' awesome.

This morning I had to do a hard reset on the blackberry. When it came back up, I suddenly had all these app update notifications pop up as though the phone was begging me not to abandon it. It was saying - look I can give you new things too!

It's not going to work, blackberry. Our relationship has been fun at times, but it's over.

_________________________
Hey, want some free reading? Check out the fiction freebie page on this very blog!
There you shall find links to two free ebooks on Smashwords and novel excerpts on Scribd.

Other places to find me:
http://www.LeaRyan.com/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/LeaRyan1

animation update

I spent a lot of time studying adobe flash, etc this past weekend. I plan to incorporate animation in my book trailers.

Adobe is really good at providing instructions on their products. The training video library on their website is extensive, which is wonderful because I need all the help I can get.

One thing adobe is not very good at is letting fireworks play nice with flash. I do all of my digital illustration in fireworks. It would be nice to be able to draw in fireworks and send it over to flash. Weird things happen when you try to do that. Textures are lost. Vector shapes magically change size. It's frustrating.

However.

Flash has its own drawing tools. Not as good as fireworks but they're sufficient. Do I sound like a spoiled baby yet?

I can do vector shapes. That's the important thing. As far as creating movement, Flash is pretty darn awesome. It can insert frames between two states so i don't have to work frame by frame. That handy function is called “tweening”. It’s very cool, even if there are some limitations.

I estimate the blooming flower animation to take about 8 hours to complete. I am somewhat relieved to feel like the animation is something I’ll be able to handle.

So where am I on the next actual trailer? I have story boards with words and pictures. Next I'm working on rough sketches for the finer points of the animation, like the blooming flowers. They will probably not be anatomically (should one use "anatomically" when talking about plants?) correct but still interesting to watch. That's the important thing.

The only animation I completed so far is a stem growing across the bottom of the movie. That is not very interesting to watch so I'm going to wait until I have more to put it up on the blog.

TTFN

_________________________
Hey, want some free reading? Check out the fiction freebie page on this very blog!
There you shall find links to two free ebooks on Smashwords and novel excerpts on Scribd.

Other places to find me:
http://www.LeaRyan.com/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/LeaRyan1