As many of you know, I harbor a deep loathing towards all things mathematical — excluding such things as addition when it comes to paychecks — and have never been good at it past algebra II. I simply do not comprehend how a writer will ever use these things except perhaps under the following circumstances:

1. Your editor has published fifteen books by you and knows three of them are western space odysseys. However, he needs to figure up how many are not western space odysseys. Whatever shall we do? Answer: 3 + X = 15

2. You have sold fifteen million copies of five books about depressed spiders. You receive 10% of each book ($10 each for pity’s sake). Calculate if you dare. Answer: 15,000,000(10)(.10)=Royalty

3. The only people who read your latest tome was your grandmother and Great-Aunt Toots. If your publishers printed 800,000 copies at $8.95 per printing, how much does the entire corporation hate you? Answer: loads.

4. You are a bad writer and earn two nickels. You are forced to become a mathematician and learn math. Answer: instead, become an orc.

These are but a few examples in which, yes, I do admit, I will require math.

It is thus that I am nearly convinced to switching to an English major next year instead of my current business major (one of many reasons — I’m not simply running from the horrors created by numbers). I understand that yes, Archimedes, Lazare Carnot, and Konrad Zuse may have been wonderful thinkers. But I simply have no use for functions that take 15 minutes to do and an entire whiteboard to explain one problem.

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If my constant ranting isn’t proof enough, these photographs should convince you what I am actually made for. These are of my real math notebooks that I use in class, highlighted so you can see what I am really doing on the page. Observe:

It appears in the previous one that I attempted to start on one of those awful number problems from Mordor, but then suddenly had a new idea and got distracted with plotting it out.

In this example, I got even less done. In fact, all I was able to do was print the subject and lesson number of whatever was being taught that day. I did, however, solve a big plot snag that was causing me headache.

This page has almost equal parts math and Other Things, a rare occurrence. I was in class and suddenly remembered that John Green was coming near my city and I wanted to go see him.

Speaking of seeing people, I will be at the Twilight film premiere on November 17th in LA. Speaking of November 17th, I will be participating in a panel with multiple other sites and some of the Twilight cast on November 16th if you want to come out and say hi. Speaking of saying hi, browse my calendar page so you know where I am and can stalk me all the easier.

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Posted in College, Writing
Tags: Calendar, Events, Math, movies, Notebooks, Twilight

Today I turned 20.

This past year has flown by so fast. My 19th birthday was in a different city, miles from where I am now. My life has changed so much in the past 12 months. And as I have done for the past few years, through different blogs, here is a short recap of a few of the things that have happened since my last birthday:

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Posted in About Me, College, Videos

In case you live under a rock and haven’t heard, Hurricane Ike is coming through Texas right now, and it looks as if it might actually hit as high as my apartment in Dallas. Observe the reasons for citywide concern:

In this image, you can see Ike (the ginormous whirling demonic thing in the corner) and me (the tiny red trembling dot). Ike appears to be nearly the size of Texas, which for all of you geographically challenged people is the second largest state in the US.

Yesterday, it was very sunny, which was very sneaky of the hurricane because nobody would have believed it was coming. We were told to chain down all of our bikes and porch furniture. I got to work on that, and then looked in the mirror, and saw something like this:

My hair had become horrifyingly long, as I haven’t had it cut since three weeks before I went to Austin. And as the Robert Pattinson, just-slithered-out-of-bed-and-I’m-ready look doesn’t exactly look good on me, I decided it would be a wonderfully prudent idea to get it done now. My reasoning behind this:

1. If Ike obliterates the place I get my haircut, my hair will grow to abysmal lengths while I search for someone nearly as Fantastic as Sam’s, and
2. If Ike obliterates me, at least I’ll die clean cut.

This had the negative effect of my hair being a little lopsidedly short, as it usually is the day of it getting cut (added benefit: during hurricanes, you can’t leave the house, and nobody sees). Unfortunately, I had to pick that day to go test out my new BlogTV channel, on which me and someone famous are going to be doing a live show. After we got it working, we thought we needed some people to test it with us, so we went to my chatroom and invited everyone over for a sneak peek. This turned into a broadcasting-until-2-am party, which was riotously fun until my eyelids began to droop. So, whoever happened to be in there: you got a look how monstrous I can appear after 2 AM

I’m looking out the window right now and it’s slowly getting darker, and the pre-40-mph winds are starting to brush the trees about. Coincidentally, it is hitting on a weekend (no doubt some diabolical plan from the college so that we don’t get a bad weather day from class). We have been told to stockpile water and food. If we get flooded in, I’ll be living off water and lasagnas for quite a while longer.

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Posted in College
Tags: College, Hurricane

After turning in my manuscript on Monday, I decided it was time to slowly return from my zombie-writer state and begin the metamorphosis into Human before class starts on Friday. Part of this includes eating regular meals that do not entirely consist of delivery pizza, delivery Mexican food or tuna helper.

Unfortunately, I go to my fridge, and see this:

Including food and snacks hidden in my closet, I currently own a grand total of:

2 cans of tuna

1 box of ham

1 bag swiss cheese

1 half-empty box of cereal (no milk)

2 Eclipse mints

The problem with all of these is that none of them are quite big enough to make a meal that will put a dent in my hunger.  That, combined with being exhausted after editing 120,000+ words multiples of times, has left me slightly loony.

Of course, as fate always goes, the night before I was turning the book in, I found a minor mishap in a sub-storyline, which is code for ‘a small plot hole’ when I don’t want to admit to it. It is not the best of feelings to arrive home at 6 PM to read the final 60 pages of your manuscript only to find that yes, there is something that needs to be fixed; yes, it is something important; and yes, you only have 6 hours in which to do it.

The good thing about finding minor mishaps in a sub-storyline is that sometimes, they lead you in a better direction than you were before. I discovered that by fixing this problem, I also was able to have a villain double-crossed, which is one of the most fun things to write, (second only to a secret door). Example:

“Here you are, massster,” hissed Earnoggin, dropping a box onto Dr. Steinsnot’s lab desk. “The brains of every citizen in all of town. Now, give me my freedom.”

Dr. Steinsnot looked over the brains, and then shrugged.

“First go put them down the brain-chute, from which nothing escapes.” he ordered.

Earnoggin quickly grabbed the box and went to the chute to dump them. But, the moment his back was turned, Dr. Steinsnot suddenly gave him a sharp kick, and sent him sprawling down the chute as well.

“Silly Earnoggin,” Dr. Steinsnot said with a cackle.

Dr. Steinsnot apparently just double-crossed the unknowing Earnoggin, by tossing him down the brain-chute and not giving him his freedom.

For those of you who haven’t seen it yet, I just installed a new chat on my other site and sometimes I drop in to talk with people. Wish me luck because school starts Friday!

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Posted in College, Writing

Listening to Into The Ocean by Blue October

Alas, I thought I had finally rid myself of the Music Trolls nearby, but that was obviously only for a week. In this place, I will never be wanting for a night full of loud, pounding, incessant, bassy, terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad music banging my desk, rattling my keyboard and knocking pictures off my walls.

I discovered the most horrifying thing of all yesterday. While the music was forcefully threatening the structural integrity of my eardrums, I decided to go check the mail. The second I stepped outside, however, the music STOPPED. I am not kidding. It just went absolutely silent. Then, to test it, I stepped back in. IT STARTED AGAIN. I did this back-and-forth motion for some time, and came to this conclusion:

In spite of that, I am just about finished with the first round of revisions. So far I have cut thousands of words of Pure Fluff that has no place in a finished novel. There were two scenes that were particularly hard to chop out. However, I managed to salvage them, tie them into a bag of bones, and I will be putting them on the website after the book is in stores, as some special outtakes.

I wasn’t able to make it to New York but I did watch the entire event for Stephenie Meyer there. It was wild even on screen. You would not believe the fans there. I watched both online shows and in the second one I sat in my site’s chatroom with about 25 other people watching too. By the time this song came on, most of us were hugging computer monitors or waving cell phones in the air. As for me, let’s just say the concert series turned me into a Blue October fan.

On a similar note, I also heard that I was indirectly responsible for messing with someone’s autograph. He he he.

Meanwhile, on those random days that I do flee my apartment in search of outside human interaction, I have still been scouring this city for a copy of the Entertainment Weekly with my interview in it. Although I was promised a free copy, it has yet to arrive, and I am impatient. My list so far:

• Walmart
• Target
• Krogers
• Tom Thumb
• 7-11
• Shell
• Chevron
• The University bookstore
• The haircut place
• Jack In The Box (I was getting desperate and hungry)

and the only thing I got in return was a sunburn. I found one copy of it, 45 minutes across the city at a store that claimed to be a Borders (the phone book said it was a Booksamillion), but I simply refuse to travel that far for one stack of papers.

While I was at Walmart, I literally got lost in the store. I was somewhere between where they sell the washrags and Hannah Montana country. I turn a corner, and suddenly I’m at a dead end. There should be no dead ends in a Walmart. It is something that will send a sane person silly. I just stood there: how is there a dead end in a Walmart! Is this real? Am I imagining it? Is this what hell is like?

Worse: an enormous, poster-sized face of Hannah Montana was sitting at the end of this place, staring back at me. I had somehow gotten lost in Miley Cyrus town. That is enough to send me running. And I did, spinning about, only to find to my horror that when I moved, the face on the poster CHANGED. Right before my eyes, Hannah Montana transformed into SOMEBODY ELSE. I am not kidding. The picture just fizzled and changed like magic. When I stepped backwards, it changed BACK AGAIN.

My reaction:

After I escaped that store relatively unscathed though mentally scarred, I got my provisions home and got right back to editing.

For those who haven’t been keeping up with the TwilightGuy.com blog, I’ve had a lot of good press recently. Although my interview got cut from the Businessweek article I got the issue in today, and happily enough there was a mention of me in there. I had my first telephone interview last week which was fun and a bit nervous at the same time. Thankfully, I wasn’t misquoted, although for the life of me I don’t remember a word I said, so they could have made up pretty much anything they wanted to.

Other than those I was told I was in the Globe and Mail on Thursday, in Canada. I think I have another interview coming out in Canada this week sometime…not sure. I also had a mention in the Gilette New-Record and a mention on Salon.com — just in time to pass the 1-million hit mark for my site! Excitement ensued.

I was hit with an idea for a new Youtube video yesterday and I should be making it soon (hint: this one will appeal to writers). Editing for days on end has left me pale and zombie-ish, so I’d want to return to my human state before filming. Along that same line of thought, my channel was recently approved into the Partners program and passed 2000 subscribers (yay!), which means I got to put the really cool banners at the top of my page. More excitement ensued.

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Posted in College, Writing