My cats are adorable, but this one manages to be adorable when my camera’s out!

In case you’re curious, the story is about a rambunctious fairy named Ginny turning a new leaf after realizing that no one, including herself, thought she was good enough for the attention of the only fairy who ever noticed her, Wart.  However, her path to developing a place of value in the community is no easy task!

“Not a Demon” made it’s way through the moderation process at Elfwood.  That was fast!

I have another work-in-progress in terms of art, but I don’t think I’ll find time to finish it before Thursday or Friday.  Oi!  It has a dragon!  DRAGON!!!

A friendly demon sheltering a lost young woman.  He’s not very demonic for a demon, is he?  Hmm… perhaps I should write a story for this as well,   I’m not posting stories online at this point for various reasons.  You might get a copy though if you request one by leaving a comment with an e-mail address for me!

Diane Ritterbush on Elfwood!

On to writing…  I’m one of those writers who wants to be an author who has a thousand works-in-progress and hasn’t yet found a definite way to get any one of them done.  I’m all over the place, but I’m enjoying being all over the place, so I don’t really mind.  However, I do want to stick at it and keep improving, so I like setting little goals here and there…

Earlier this week, I decided I would write a short story based on my “An Argument Over a Turtle” drawing.  I did!  It ended up being 4,011 words (6 pages) and was a lot of fun for me.  Really, I totally dig fantasy love stories.  Actually, I just plain dig love stories.  The only problem is that it really felt like it could have used a better introduction… and what I told was really the beginning of a love story.

Oh bugger, another project!

One of my major weaknesses with writing and something I’m trying REALLY hard to conquer is not letting my characters tell the story.  Really.  I have a long history of plotting every little action that my character will perform without bothering to check if the character would really do something like that.  One of my self-challenges in writing the short story was to let my characters BE THEMSELVES without my intervention.

So my goal for the weekend is to flesh out a list of events happening TO the characters in my story, and then write a follow-up to my short story to see how they will react to the changes.  Let’s see how that goes!

I heard about Megan Crewe’s Give Up the Ghost through Literary Agent Kristin Nelson’s blog.

For a blurb, go here.  This blog is a review, not a synopsis–no spoilers.

Give Up the Ghost by Megan Crewe was amazing!  Awesome characters, good plot, original, and well-written! 

This book totally brought me back to high school in terms of emotions and setting.  I laughed, cried, got angry and scared with the main character.  I also couldn’t believe how real this book was.  This book is not the standard forced “happily ever after” fare.  You also don’t have to worry about characters randomly falling in and out of love with each other to make the story more interesting.  Each character is extremely genuine with flaws and saving grace, and I had no trouble empathizing with them or imagining them in the real world.

On top of that, it was a good story.  I wanted to know what would happen to the characters, and I didn’t put it down until I found out.  I also found the book therapeutic in the many life problems it addressed, whether it be back-stabbing friends, loss of a loved one, dealing with depressed friends, managing social anxiety, or whatever…  A lot went into this book, and I’m planning to buy it for some of my own friends as well.

Seriously, good job Megan!

“An Argument Over a Turtle”

This drawing was inspired by this Cute Overload image.  I’m working on a short story for it as well,

“You Don’t Have to Kill Me”

This drawing is of the climax for one of my stories that I’ve been working on forever.  Who knows if I’ll finish it, or if this scene will still be in it when I do!

Still yummy, but not the same.

So I came across this recipe on AllRecipes.com–speaking of which, AllRecipes.com is my latest obsession.  I mean, I can look up recipes, look up extra ingredients, click this rating button and almost always find something relatively simple that tastes fabulous.

I picked this recipe because it required the fewest weird ingredients outside of potaotes, butter, salt, and milk.  I made it without changes last week.  It was good, but the potatoes weren’t as creamy as desired.

So I made it again this week with a few adjustments:

1. Included Yukon gold potatoes (this cleared out my potato inventory)
2. Left the potato skins on (saved me 30min of work and a sore hand)
3. Doubled the milk suggested in the recipe

It was amazing!  It was perfectly smooth outside of the occasional potato skin.  I think the Yukon potatoes helped here, as their skins tend to be smoother and thinner than those of Russet potatoes.  Honestly, it was hard to tell I left them on!

I also topped this off with a sauteed leek I had leftover from another recipe.  It’s a great combination, and I’ll definitely be making it again!

Diane is here on your interwebs!  I’m kinda a quirky person who likes to do a bunch of things.  I also like sharing those things and getting feedback on them.

So hey, I thought, let’s blog about it!

Meanwhile, I’m also trying to give some structure to all the things I do so I’m more likely to do them.  Kinda like short-term planning, y’know?

So this week, I’m planning to blog on a recipe for mashed potatoes, a book I read and loved, some fairy art for fun, and my writing goals for this week.  I’m hoping, HOPING, to get an Elfwood page set up soon with my art on it.  That would be nice and might get more visitors here, because Elfwood is notorious for taking forever to update.  Y’know, so they’ll sign up for my blog to see new art and stuff sooner… right?  maybe?  Well no harm in trying!

That’s a wrap for the first post!