Just ’cause it’s Friday!

I tend to do mini-celebrations on Fridays for no apparent reason. You’ll likely catch me wearing my wildest and weirdest stuff on Fridays or perhaps driving a car that I haven’t driven all week. Hell, even lighting a different candle, wearing silly socks or drinking a different tea than my usuals ones. Granted, it doesn’t take much to get me to celebrate. But the amount of celebration tends to be according to the day. And well, today’s celebration is simply…

‘Cause it’s Friday…

Meet Toad and the Toadlets (Warwick and Llewelyn).

These pics are actually about a year and a half old, but I just found them last week while looking for pics of England to share on this blog and I had to post them. I mean, it’s Friday and these pics made me giggle. I figured I’d post the following picture so that you could get an idea of the magnitude of my desert tortoise. The two on his back are his children.

So far, Toad has tons of personality, but even a year and a half later, the Toadlets have yet to develop distinct personalities. I suppose there’s decades for that to happen!

My new motor

It’s looking like I might have the necessary spare time to get my new engine into my old Mustang…

Ain’t it purrrty?! And the real beauty of it is that the car it’s going into doesn’t have power steering or power brakes, the fuel pump is electric and therefore doesn’t bolt to the motor and the fan is electric thereby keeping further drag from the motor…and making for lots less work when swapping! Yay!

I won’t even have to swap carburetors. I did, however, get new headers which’ll go in when the engine does–this’ll be the first time I’ve put headers in with a motor. Last time, the engine was already in and me and a buddy had to muscle the darn things in and around…good golly that sucked, but I gained noticeable horsepower by going from stock manifolds directly to full length headers.

This is gonna be tons of fun…

And my convertible Mustang will get the hand-me-down so that it’ll no longer get smoked by 6-cylinder TransAms from the mid-80s. Granted, the convertible is all about cruising, but come on, right now that poor car can’t even break its peg-leg loose when I stomp on the gas…unless I’m in a puddle. Sad. Really sad.

Here’s me and my two ‘Stangs…

Funny, how just a few posts down, I was talking about sewing and now I’m talking about cars. Makes me think I should round out by mentioning antique doll restoration just so I can have all of my hobbies covered!

Jason and I in Locus Magazine!

A few posts down the list, I mentioned that I was pouting and sighing because my issue of Locus had yet to arrive…

Well, it finally showed up and I scanned the shot of myself and my wonderful hubby, Jason Stoddard!

And what a fitting shot for the first one I’ve put up here on my lovely blog…

Just Breathe

In an effort to fix my posture (sitting hours on end hunched over a keyboard does not do wonders for my back) I’ve started to do more yoga. I suppose part of that is because lately as I do more in class, I discover more about myself, the way I operate and in some cases how stupid I am.

In class, I never question whether or not I can do a pose. If the teacher says it, I give it a try. Sometimes I pay the next day, sometimes I don’t. Sometimes I discover new fun and amazing tricks to astound my friends at parties, sometimes I learn just how incredibly close my head is in relation to my ass.

And then there are times when it seems everything is right in the world. Somehow, bending upside down on my pink-with-purple-paisley yoga mat while staring at my ugly feet just really brings out the best in my life. I don’t know how, but it does.

After those classes, I go home physically taller, more relaxed than ever…and very thirsty after having dehydrated myself all day by drinking tea.

And then there are times when everything is wrong in the world. Those days where I can’t balance on one foot to save my life. Or I go into a lunge and swear I tore something. I don’t know why this happens, but I’ve found that it correlates to writing, too.

No matter what, everything shall pass. The show must go on. I just gotta remember to keep breathing. Believe me, pushing up, over and backward in order to climb down a wall is not a moment when breathing is quite as near the forefront as trying not to land on my head!

But hey, a couple classes ago, I climbed down the wall and right back up–without any help.

All I did was breathe.

The show does go on.

A Virtual Costume Masquerade

So, I’m hanging out with Jason and some friends in the dealer room at LosCon over this past weekend and a man approaches me. He’s got a video camera and wants to know if I’d like to participate in the virtual costume masquerade.

The first thought that went through my head was, “Costume? What costume? I’m wearing a costume? This is a costume?” and I looked down at my get-up.

Pointy, low, black leather boots, red with black alligator print pants, black and white half shirt and a floor-length, black, laced-up, gothic-esque jacket.

While I was still too utterly stunned for words, one of my buddies said, “Costume? That’s her regular clothes!”

And that was so dog gone true!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It took me another fifteen seconds to fully process the whole thing and in the end, I was in the masquerade, but still found it surreal and amusing. If I’d known there was a virtual masquerade, I’d’ve worn something more costume-esque! Or at least geese with stripes…

Oh well. There’s always next year!

Pen names

Yeah, I write under a pen name… Two in fact.

Some people do it for privacy reasons. Like they’re deep undercover writing erotic romance while living in the Bible belt or teaching third grade…maybe even both.

Some people do it because their real name isn’t memorable or doesn’t have a nice ring.

Some people do it because they don’t like their real name.

Some people do it because they’d rather go by a different name.

I’m sort of a combination. My real name, Lisa, is okay…sort of a dime-a-dozen growing up so I’d rather have a different name. After too many misdirected shouts on the playground from kids who wanted to play with ‘the other Lisa’ or teachers scolding ‘the other Lisa’, I’d kind of retired it in my head anyway. Yeah, Lisa is my name, but I don’t get upset when people call me, “Hey you.”

I took my last name from Jason when we got married. Thus, I became Lisa Stoddard. Yeah, it’s not bad, but it’s also not good. I mean, there’s another Stoddard who writes science fiction. Jason isn’t related to the guy, but the name is too similar.

See, this is where the necessity for a pen name comes in…recognition. I don’t want anyone confusing my work with Jason’s. It’s totally different and if you pick up a Jason Stoddard book expecting a Lisa Stoddard story, you’re gonna be extremely disapointed and vice-versa.

I mentioned that I write under two pen names. That’s only half true. My other pen name is a shared pen name. My best friend and I write as a team under the name Ashleigh Raine. Yeah, we could’ve put both our names on the books, but Ashleigh Raine just sounds so much better and it also has sentimental significance for us.

Now, on to my pen name. Well, in the Ashleigh Raine books, my favorite character to write is Twyla Emerson. If Ashleigh hadn’t been published first, I’ll bet my pen name would be Twyla Emerson, but I’m also glad Ashleigh was published first because I can’t imagine that particular character with a name different than Twyla Emerson. I mean, she’s been a part of my life since high school.

High school… That leads me to being the Raine half of Ashleigh Raine. When I doodled out stories all those years ago, if I didn’t have a set female character name, I used Raine. That’s why the pen name Ashleigh Raine works very well for when I write with my best friend.

Back to high school… There was another character whom I’d noodled out various stories about, but she had a full name… Rina Slayter.

What better pen name than from a character I’ve written since high school? Becoming her in the flesh and mind means I’m ruthless, strong, tough, ass-kicking and intriguing on the outside, but mysterious, sweet and deeply hurt on the inside. Lots of flaws to challenge, play with and work around.

And if the author herself isn’t interesting, how the hell is her work supposed to be? Writers write what they know…

There you have my story on writing under a pen name…and a half!

web woes and happy endings

I spent a large portion of my weekend grumbling at my computer. Sure, there’s a beautiful placeholder up at www.rinaslayter.com, but for some reason, the website I’m building behind it is aggravating me.

See, I’m not a programmer. I really don’t know how to build websites. I use ingenuity, patience and determination to figure stuff out and have mostly learned enough to be dangerous. When my other two websites were handed to me [www.fictionados.com and www.ashleighraine.com], the hardest stuff had already been done. Yeah, I went in and tweaked some code, but the rest has all been duplicating and modifying pages, not building them from a blank screen.

I’m adventurous. I love a little [or a lot] of challenge, but I’m experiencing frustration at the current creation of my website. The sad part is that I’ve got a ton of text formatted and ready to go. All I gotta do is drop it into a site, but if that site won’t come together…well…you understand my frustration.

I did get the homepage together. It’s mostly empty, but all the links work. I did get one subpage together. It’s got my bio on it and all the links work. But as for the aforementioned stack of content ready to drop in…Absolutely nada.

Yeah, I probably bit off more than I could chew in thinking I’d have the thing together enough to input text, but that has NEVER stopped me before. I always think big.

And I usually make my goals.

One of my prior employers was called as a reference. He said, “Rina often bites off more than she can chew, takes on huge projects and when they get into crunch time, she works her ass off to make sure they’re done on time.”

And that is so true about me even though up until that point, I’d never realized it. I don’t think I’ve EVER missed a deadline. If I did, it wasn’t a big enough infraction that I remember it right now.

My background is in theatre. The show must go on. That’s where I learned to be early on a deadline. My lighting designs were always turned in a week early, hung as soon after that as possible and my cues were always written and loaded into the light board before technical rehearsals. It made for a better show because the hard part was done and I could focus on editing, tweaking, making the show truly shine. [sorry about the bad lighting pun]

I’m just glad the only deadline for my website was my own personal goal. If there’d been an outside force asking for the site, I doubt I would’ve gotten any sleep at all last night!

Oh well. I’m happy with my progress and look forward to my next head-banging, hair-ripping-out, grumping, tea-drinking-marathon installment of work on my website because I can’t wait to toot my horn about it being up and running!!!!!

I gotta get used to this whole horn tooting thing. So I’m starting small.

…But after I go on a week’s vacation to stay in haunted California hotels…

See ya when I get back! Maybe I’ll have rinaslayter.com up shortly afterward. Or at least that’s my personal deadline.

Thankfully, “shortly afterward” is a vague amount of time!!!!!!

sewn, rejected, submitted, requested and started

I’ve managed to add about ten things to my wardrobe in the last week.

No, I didn’t go shopping again…

I mended stuff I already have: Purple jeans, checkerboard 70s shirt, fluorescent pink 80s dress…and some other stuff that was necessary, but not flamboyant.

EARTHQUAKE! Just a tiny one, though. I thought I’d imagined it until I noticed the chains dangling on my ceiling fan.

Anyhow, rejection letters are streaming in–some for me, some for Jason–and I’m enjoying comparing notes with Jason. That’s what makes it fun. We’ve submitted to some of the same people. So far, he’s gotten better responses than I have.

But I did get a request to see more of one of my novels. I’m pretty darn stoked about that. That was my first written request and I’ve framed it. Ironically, I’d opened a rejection just before opening the request, so I’d assumed it was going to be another. Hell, even if I get a rejection from it later, I’ll cherish it and the euphoria that I’ve floated on for three days now. Life is very, very good.

And today…(I’ve saved the best for last) …today I started my next novel. I will easily have it done by the end of the year. (And no, that statement will not jinx me–this book is really that easy to write…’course I’m only in chapter one right now, things could change.)

I recall some of my acting classes back when I was in college (I was a lighting/sound/set technician, but required to take acting classes, too). Us budding actors and begrudging technicians were assigned a series of scenes that we had to re-enact for the class. I say re-enact because we had to take moments of our life and present them as slice of life exercises.

In essence, our characters were ourselves.

I found it remarkably easy to be myself…

I still don’t know why it was considered ‘acting’.

I got A’s on all those assignments.

And what am I getting at with this tangent?

My new book essentially stars myself as the main character, is based on a conglomeration of events in my life–although funny-ed up a whole lot–and is written in first person.

So far, I’ve felt like I’ve been walking down memory lane and writing an autobiography which is much more interesting than the way stuff really happened. (The truly bizarre stuff won’t start until at least chapter five or so–those events won’t even need funny-ing–they’re already bizarre.)

I might end up shelving this before it’s done. I might end up writing it faster than SR. I might even get bored with myself or finally identify with those budding actors in my classes who thought it incredibly difficult to ‘act’ like themselves.

Maybe they just didn’t know who they were and what they wanted. That’s what my scenes were all about. I was X and I needed Y, but Z got in my way as I dealt with A, B and C. If you don’t know who you are or what you want, Z is going to devour you and A, B and C will only kick you while you’re down.

Hmmm…I just unintentionally inspired myself to go write another chapter…

geese with stripes and my bio…again

In the very short time that I have owned my Armani suit, it has already inspired me…and I haven’t even worn it yet!

I redid my bio…slightly.

Here it is again:

Rina Slayter lives in Los Angeles with her writer husband Jason Stoddard and absolutely loves life. When she isn’t writing romantic women’s fiction, she’s working as a background actor in television shows and feature films. Visit her blog for more details and screen captures from her blink-of-an-eye performances. As half of the award-winning Ashleigh Raine writing team, Rina writes mostly paranormal, erotic romance and is published through Ellora’s Cave. She is webmistress of www.ashleighraine.com (check out all the bonus features), www.rinaslayter. com (read her Tales From Hollywood) and www.fictionados.com (she’s one of the founding members of her local genre fiction group). Outside of writing and Hollywood, Rina has a passion for early English history (especially Celtic Wales), cars (with Jason, she owns 8 and works on them), sewing (see some of her creations on her website), and antique dolls (she buys them in pieces and restores them herself), snooty green tea (no day is complete without a cup or two…or three or four) and thrift shopping (watch for her $30 Armani suit and the infamous Out Of This World swirl dress).

I couldn’t resist my addiction to shopping second hand stores. They’re incredible. I’ve been the exact same size since high school and have been thrift shopping since the year after I graduated…that’d be 12 years now. Consequently, my wardrobe is gigantic and includes quite a few gems.

Also, when I work as a background actor, it helps to have a diverse wardrobe. I discovered 70s clothes while working on Starsky & Hutch and Anchorman. Since then, I’ve learned to cherish my polyester shirt with geese and stripes.

And my grandma would be proud to see me in a purple and pink floral pantsuit. I swear she had one just like it when I was a kid.

Then there’s my crazy 80s stuff. Good golly don’t ever get in a clothing war with me–I can accessorize, too!

But throughout my years of apparel hunting and collecting, I have come across quite a few favorites and things I would’ve paid full price for if I’d had the money or if I’d found them new. The Armani suit, the thigh-high black suede witch boots, the blue flame pants, the black leather trenchcoat, my green Doc Martins. But then again, it’s the thrill of the hunt that truly lights my shopping fire. I never know what I’m gonna see or what I’m gonna come home with… geese with stripes, pleated swirls, or fluourescent daisies.

Buying second hand is recycling and saving money for the times when I might really need it… Like for super-nice gowns to wear to awards ceremonies. I’ve thrifted a few, but they’re on my to-be-mended/shrunk pile in my sewing room for that day or two when I have some good sewing time.

My bio! My bio! Yaaaay!

Let me just say that I suck at writing bios. I really do. I’m not one to toot my own horn about anything. I’ll toot someone else’s horn, but my own? Nah… Or at least not entirely willingly if the horn-tooting is necessary or truly a big deal.

Well, today, I’m tooting my own horn about tooting my own horn…

I wrote my official bio last night and I just gotta post it here or I’m gonna go insane:

Rina Slayter lives in the Los Angeles area with her writer husband Jason Stoddard and absolutely loves life. When she isn’t writing romantic women’s fiction, she’s working as a background actor in television shows and feature films. Visit her blog for more details and screen captures from her blink-of-an-eye performances. As half of the award-winning Ashleigh Raine writing team, Rina writes mostly paranormal, erotic romance and is published through Ellora’s Cave. She is webmistress of www.ashleighraine.com (check out all the bonus features), www.rinaslayter.com (read her Tales From Hollywood), and www.fictionados.com (she’s one of the founding members of her local genre fiction writers group). Outside of writing and Hollywood, Rina has a passion for early English history (especially Celtic Wales), cars (with Jason, she owns 8 and works on them), sewing (see some of her creations on her website), and antique dolls (she buys them in pieces and restores them herself)…and snooty green tea (no day is complete without a cup or two…or three or four.

This also means I better get my website up and running. As you can tell by my bio, I’ve got a lot planned. I’m pretty excited and hope to have things up and running within a month–even if it’s small.

Hey, I gotta start somewhere.

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