Under Serious Construction!!!!!
Good golly gracious me is my new site under construction!!!!
I’m having fun putting this thing together, but I can’t seem to do it fast enough. Please bear with me for the time being.
If you’re looking for information on Otherness: Rift, click here. I’ll have my site together soon, with even more information…including reviews–a few 5s no less!
Otherness: Rift is now available in print!
Magic is only a small part of the real dangers lurking in a future of dark otherness.
It’s official. Otherness: Rift is now sitting on my coffee table. It just didn’t seem real until that moment. I dunno know why.
…And I just did a video for it. Oddly enough, I had to move my book in order to shoot some of the footage for the video, too!
What an experience this has been. From research, to writing, to rewriting, to editing, to rewriting, to release in ebook, to release in paperback and now doing this video. Wow. Life is insane, but very, very good.
I came home very ill
In fact, I don’t fully recall any head colds in my recent history which were this evil.
I do recall one back in ’94 or ’95 when I was the technical director of a high school production of the Sound of Music…or was it South Pacific when I was so ill? Either way, I completely lost my voice and was having to whisper-holler from the back of the gym. See, if I’d taken a day off, the show wouldn’t’ve gone on very well. The show always goes on, but I owed the kids a damn good show and that was what they put together my illness notwithstanding.
But ten years later? Well, let’s just say I’m taking those days off that I missed back then and I’m not entirely convinced that I ‘missed’ much those years ago. I’ve watched the entire 6th season of Highlander in the last two days. What I wouldn’t give to be able to read a book without my eyes getting all bleary. Another day or so and I’ll be writing again. I have so much to say, too!
RT was AWESOME! I missed Jen a lot, but I also made a lot of new friends. I’ve got tons to write about there. One of my new, well…newer, friends Kathy Love is a finalist for the Prism awards. I can’t wait until RWA National to see how it all turns out.
Also, today, I discovered that my hubby, Jason Stoddard is a finalist for the Theodore Sturgeon award. I love my man. Yeah, the same guy with the “I think. I can.” shirt on in some of the engine swap pics is a finalist. That’s awesome. Life is good.
Big news!
There’s no picture to go with this one. At least not yet.
About two hours before leaving for my trip to England, I got some fantastic news…
MY FIRST NOVEL IS UNDER CONTRACT!
It’s an urban fantasy entitled Otherness: Rift. It’s the first in my Otherness series and I’m absolutely thrilled to see that it will be published by Samhain Publishing in Fall of this year.
I still need to refine the ‘what it’s about’ blurb, but here’s the gist of the book:
Liz Spencer only wants to dump her boyfriend, not change her entire life. But a freak earthquake strikes her town, revealing that California’s rock solid history goes back much further than the Gold Rush–centuries earlier, in fact. And cursed magic still thrives today within Liz’s best friend, Tayna. She’d always been odd, but magic? Well…yes. And when Kyre, a powerful warlock, lures away Liz’s new roommate, Andrea, for his own sordid purposes, Liz and Tayna use magical spells with the help of a few ancient, forgotten curses to thwart him. A millennia-old family rivalry is ended by taming Kyre and rescuing Andrea. But magic is only a small part of the real dangers lurking in a future of dark otherness.
There’s a lot going on in this book and it’s really hard to sum up, but suffice it to say, I truly love this book. I’ve done a lot of research, even been to a few of the historical places where a lot of my ideas originated. This series is one of the main reasons I keep going back to England. The history is so rich and when night falls, the magic in the air is practically tangible.
As I get more news about Rift, I’ll share it here, of course. In the mean time, I’m going to enjoy a good cup of tea to celebrate.
Dungeon Majesty!
At the time, I hadn’t realized what I’d gotten myself into–other than a lot of fun–but as half of Ashleigh Raine, I was interviewed for a show called Dungeon Majesty.
After receiving an email about a screening they’re doing on March 23rd in Hollywood, I checked out their site again…it had been awhile since last I’d visited. In fact, it’d been so long that I didn’t remember what it looked like last time I was there.
Anyhow, on this trip, I discovered two of their episodes and zowie-wowie, I can’t wait to see the other ones. They’ve got something like 8 done. Only 2 are up on their site, though.
All I gotta do now is start planning my outfit for the screening next month. You see, when they interviewed me, I was wearing the infamous swirl dress and I need to make sure I’m wearing something as…uh…stellar.
Or at least barbaric or magical!
My first movie premiere
So, while during a signing at Dark Delicacies in Burbank, I was offered tickets to go to the premiere of Doom. The other half of Ashleigh Raine can’t make it and neither can my hubby Jason, so I’m relegated to go with his best friend Eddie.
That much I’m excited about.
The torrential rain attacking LA right now…
Not so excited about it.
Then again, when I’m involved, anything is possible. I’m still gonna go and do my best to have a great time.
But I know that for the most part because of the rain this adventure’s going to be one of those stories that starts with, “Yeah, well the first premiere I ever went to–it was raining cats and dogs so I wore vinyl pants, tall vinyl boots and…”
Who knows? Could be better. Could be worse. I’ll bet there’ll definitely be a story in it, though.
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!!!!!!
“Jason Stoddard week”
Through Jay Lake, I received a link to Jonathan Strahan’s blog saying…and I quote…
“…it’s Jason Stoddard week.”
Yes, my wonderful husband Jason’s week has arrived. We knew some of his stories would hit in September, but we had no idea they’d all be posted/published during the same week! Words cannot describe my elation. Jason’s awesome. I’ll admit that I can’t read most of his work because it’s more sci-fi than I’m familiar with, but his more accessible stuff is great.
Okay, now I’m just wondering when it gets to be Rina Slayter week!
Looking back…
I just reread my first post… Wow! A lot has happened since then. OR is done and BR has been submitted. The new one’s called F for now. I really gotta change it, though.
Aside from all that, I forgot to mention in the previous post that I’ll be attending BEA (Book Expo America) in New York, June3-4 for me. I should be at the Ellora’s Cave booth signing books at some point. I will also drop by the Writer’s Of the Future booth because Jason Stoddard (my dear hubby) won 1st place for 1st quarter 2003 and for some reason they have taken a liking to me as well as Jason. I don’t know why, but it’s really nifty to be welcomed the same as Jason. He’s not gonna be there, so I guess they’re kinda settling for me, but that’s quite all right by me! I’m looking forward to seeing them again.
I’m also gonna go to RWA National in Reno at the end of July and I’ll probably spend a few days at Comic Con which is mid-July.
I dunno why, but I’ve really started to take a liking to conventions. Does this make me completely deranged? I recall the old days, selling lighting filters, where going to conventions meant pure, boring hell and hard work. Then again, I was chained to the booth. And I won’t let any of that happen ever again!!!!!
Okay, now I’m just procrastinating… It’s time to write… Really… I swear it…
4Mula1 Music Video
The following is from an email sent shortly after the shoot:
On Sunday night, I was on the set of a music video for a brand new boy band called 4Mula1. And actually, I wasn’t booked, my car was.
It was a night shoot and I got there at 5:30PM knowing I’d be there until the sun came up the following morning. No big deal, it’s just been a little while since the last time I had a night shoot plus I’d also been in England the week before and hadn’t realized that I was still a little jet-lagged. Consequently, despite the fact that I was tired, I was remarkably awake the whole night due to the 8 hour time difference. What does all that mean? Well… unfortunately not a whole lot.
I spent from 5:30 until “lunch” at 8 reading Things That Go Bump In The Night IV because my car wasn’t going to be used until later.
“Later” ended up being 4AM! Right after lunch, they did the performance part of the video in which all the guys plus dancers did their thing in front of 4 cars on the 6th street bridge near downtown LA. I must say, I really like their song “Gotta Roll.” It doesn’t come out until later this month, but even after hearing it for about 5 hours straight, I didn’t get tired of it. It’s a combination of R&B and Pop and it’s their very first single. It’ll be fun to see where they go because judging by the size of the shoot, they’ve got some real money backing them even though they’re just starting out. They’re also very talented singers and dancers…and nice guys, too! I spoke to one of the guys’ girlfriends. She was really sweet, but I didn’t catch her name.
When that set-up was done, they went to the next location which was where my car was finally used. The actor who drove it was really nice, too. He played the sort of bad guy. See, there was also a mini-storyline through the video in which G catches his girlfriend cheating on him. My ‘66 Corvette was the car the guy was driving when G caught up with him. Unfortunately, the shot might not even make it into the finished product. I’m not real sure, but it just seemed like by the time they got to that shot, everyone was restless and didn’t really have their hearts in it so they didn’t do a whole lot of takes. I hope it gets used, but I’m not betting on it.
As soon as that was done (around 5AM) I finally got to go home. I was sooooo tired, but all in all it wasn’t a bad night. I mean, because my body reverted to England time, I was alert and awake the whole night even though I wasn’t actually doing anything but watching or reading.
The only real bummer was that I was scheduled for a wardrobe fitting at 10:20 the next day… I only got 2 hours of sleep before I had to be up and gone. It was for what I think might be a flashback to 1974 in a movie called “Where The Truth Lies.” I brought a ton of stuff and the wardrobe people hated everything.
I totally hate it when that happens…not mostly because I lugged all that crap with me, but because being that I’m in SAG, I don’t actually need to bring clothes with me, I do it as a courtesy to the costumers especially on period pieces because that way they can save a few dollars not having to rent an outfit for me and they never seem to appreciate the fact that I tried.
Only Anchorman really appreciated me bringing wardrobe. The rest of the period shows I’ve done have first turned up their noses at what I brought, then tried to fit me from their selection only to discover that I’m so damn small that they don’t have anything that doesn’t fit me like a tent, and they end up chosing something from my stuff anyway.
I don’t know why it is that they freak out when they see an Extra who brought period clothes. I mean, it’d be one thing if my stuff wasn’t the real deal, but it’s genuine. They always look at the labels and say, “Well, I guess it’ll be okay.”