My goodness, it's true! Some insanely kind (and thusfar anonymous) person gave me a subscription! I have no idea when it happened or who did it, but what a wonderful gesture! I'm so grateful!

THANK YOU!!!

Now to figure out who dunnit so that I may express my appreciation!

And as you can see, I've had absolutely no trouble with getting arounf the subscriber perks. *Eyes the block of stamps* >.>



SO! Because you guys are all super cool and supportive and overall nice people, I figure you won't mind welcoming an old friend of mine to devintArt.

[link]

I've told you time and time again that as far as poetry goes, I have very little going for me. But I absolutely adore this guy's work and I think you will too. Even if I can't quite identify it, something about his poems are truly beautiful. And like I said, he's an old friend, so be polite (he's shy)!

My goodness, it's true! Some insanely kind (and thusfar anonymous) person subscribed me! What a wonderful gesture! I'm so grateful!

THANK YOU!!!

Now to figure out who dunnit so that I may express my appreciation!

*~*~*~*~*~*

Critique Week
Have you heard about it? If not, definitely check it out! I went ahead and submitted Wendell: Prologue and the first four chapters of Gargoyle. My concern with the new prologue for Gargoyle is that those two little chapters don’t blend well with later chapters, and I’ve had reservations with them because of how much they actually reveal. It’s important stuff to know, but I’ve been wondering if I want readers to know this stuff so early in the story. These people behind Critique Week certainly won’t get the final say, but I do wonder what their thoughts will be…

SO! If you’re interested and willing to get some serious critique on your work, check out Critique Week: [link]

Writing Excuses
linked me to this (just like she linked me to Critique Week, actually) talk show/podcast arranged by these three writers. They discuss almost everything any writer, experienced or aspiring, might want to know. Very informative and very funny. I’m officially addicted. So I’m linking you to it, if you’re interested: [link]



On a completely different note, I'm ecstatic because I earned my first A on an essay in my Comp 102 class this semester. I'd only been earning B's til now. My teacher is a very hard man to please, and he's also very hard to learn from. But I must have done something right this time! And I worked so hard on it and dedicated so much time to it!

OC Meme
Just fun stuff. Feel free to steal (I stole in from )

, I know I still have to do your 8 Facts thing you tagged me with. I'll get to it this week. Pinkie promise!


Anyway we’ll be sticking to characters from Gargoyle.

My Main Characters
From Gargoyle
Hannah Wallstone
Jonathan Sicari
Alexander Williams
Bade
Sara Williams
Donovan Torres



1. Who are your main character(s)?:
Gargoyle has about six main characters, but we’ll narrow it down to Jonathan Sicari and Alexander Williams. And I have a lot to say about why it’s narrowed down to those two and not, say, Hannah. For one thing Hannah is not really relatable (one of my fears is that the new prologue makes her relatable in ways I’ve never wanted). But they are the stem of the conflict: Alex tries to do the greatest good he can by helping others with what little power he has while Jonathan does what, in my mind, is a great evil by using power for selfish reasons. And they are opposites, and they do attract. That attraction alongside other good and bad qualities makes them interesting (I hope).

2. Who are your oldest character(s)?:
Oldest as in who was created first? Jonathan Sicari came first, back in... Gosh, must have been seventh grade, so about six years ago.

3. Who are your newest character(s):
I think Donovan is the newest. I had very specific reasons for creating him, and he fits through the cracks of the story. But make so mistake, the cracks came first.

4. Who is your strongest character(s)?:
I think all my characters are really strong in different ways. It’s hard to single one out. But if I really had to, I’d say Jonathan. He’s just so childish, and children scream the loudest when they’re unhappy. He also has the strongest potential in his story to do either good or bad.

5. Who is your smartest character(s)?:
Bade is my wiseman, without a doubt. He’s been through a lot and has really learned from all of his experiences.

6. Who is your dumbest character(s)?:
Ooh, hard to say, because everybody seems so smart in their own way. But I’d say it’s a close tie between Sara and Donny. Sara’s selfishness can be considered stupid, and it happens to be her biggest flaw. In later chapters of Gargoyle you’ll see that Donny becomes very bitter and rebellious, so is almost always in trouble. And you know, even Alex has a tendency to be really naïve. But none of them are particularly dumb… I bet it’d be fun to work with a genuine simpleton.

7. Who is your quietest character(s)?:
Definitely Hannah. Who can blame her, really? The wonderful thing I find about Hannah though is that she still has a strong voice, even when silent. In fact a lot of her voice comes from that silence.

8. Who is your loudest character(s)?:
Jonathan wins this one again not because of the actual volume of his voice, but because of how much he needs to be heard. This should be a given.

9. Who is your most annoying character(s)?:
Sara pisses me off the most. I love her, but she’s such a teenager! She’s plays her role as younger sister so well, but I have little sisters of my own (it’s fair to say much of Sara’s attitude is modeled after my own fifteen year old sister) and have enough o deal with already. I’m also not a fan of her blind devotion.

10. Who is your most mature character(s)?:
Bade, for the same reasons that he is the wisest. Maturity, and wisdom on some occasions, comes from experience. Bade has the most of that because he’s lived the longest and because his life is full of trials.

11. Who is your most worrisome character(s)?:
Hannah and Alex. Hannah worries a lot about a few things, and Alex worries a little about lots of things. They’re all big things, don’t get me wrong, but they worry about them on different levels that I can’t actually compare. Hannah worries so much that she crumbles, whereas Alex tries to worry in a productive way out his desire to do good.

12. Who is your meanest character(s):
Jonathan. He’s mean on a whole lot of fluctuating levels. His nastiness ebbs and flows. What’s interesting, and you’ll see it too eventually, is that his rare kindness can rival even Alex’s.

13. Who is your kindest character(s)?:
Alex. He’s my sweetheart hero! Bade’s a close second. Alex’s kindness seems to come from genuine innocence, whereas Bade’s comes from his experiences with just how bad nastiness can be.

14. Who are your oldest (age) characters?:
Bade is the oldest at 96.

15. Who are your youngest characters?:
Donovan’s the youngest. When he first appears in Gargoyle he is only eight years old.

16. Goth Characters:
Um… I don’t think I really have any.

17. Prep Characters:
I could say any Ansel Agent from Gargoyle is preppy in a way. But not really. They’re very uniform, but is that really preppy? No, I didn’t think so.

18. Punk Characters:
Donny becomes pretty punkish later in his life, out of his need to rebel. But he never takes on a typical punkish appearance.

19. Nerd Characters:
I guess Sara. She’s a nerd for Jonathan, but beyond that I don’t really have any.

20. Shy Characters:
Hannah is my shyest, because she’s just afraid of everything. And Alex can be a little shy sometimes because he wants to be polite and not offend people too much. But he’ll also say what needs to be said, so if he’s shy it’s to a much lesser degree.

21. Social Characters:
Jonathan rules an entire underground society. It doesn’t get more social than that. Alex, too, is social in that he wants to help people (it translates sometimes into general humanitarianism).

22. Bossy Characters:
Jonathan again. Like I said, he has a whole society to run. His people look up to him, and he’s expected to take charge.

23. Cross-dresser Characters:
Don’t have any cross-dressers, transvestites, or open homosexuals. But I’ve always wanted to work with one.

24. Rude Characters:
I think Sara may be my rudest because she’s the most likely to tell you something you don’t want to hear. Unless you’re Jonathan. Then she’ll tell you exactly what you do want to hear. Donny tries to be rude and sometime succeeds, managing to hit you where it hurts, but it’s a very unnatural thing for him. The reason Jonathan isn’t the rudest is that he almost never has to be, since he does try to maintain a sense of professionalism. And he’s more mean than rude.

25. Cheerful Characters:
Because Gargoyle isn’t a cheerful story, its characters don’t often get the chance to act so. But Alex has the most potential for cheerfulness, since he’s the most optimistic.

26. Know-It-All Characters:
All my characters are pretty smart. But I’m going to go with Bade again, because he’s not only been through it all, but he now teaches it all.

27. Emo Characters:
Emotional… A list of stoic characters is much shorter. All the characters seem to be motivated by a core emotion. Hannah’s is fear. Sara’s is jealously. Donny’s is loneliness. Jonathan is anger. Alex is hope. Bade is the only character who isn’t all that emo.

28. Loveable Characters:
I’m very biased. But if I polled this I’m sure Alex would win in a landslide.

29. Hottest Characters:
Matter of opinion? And how are we defining hot? I’d most like to sleep with Jonathan. I’d love to pick Bade’s brain. I’d love to talk about my future with Alex. Those are all “hot” to me, as opposed to just looks. And my girls have too many flaws, I think, for anyone to really consider them hot.

30. Sexiest Characters:
Slightly more specific, but essentially the same question. What do you consider sexy?

31. Sporty Characters:
Sara’s the most ambitious and takes her training in any field very seriously.

32. Show-off Characters:
Also Sara. She just wants to make a name for herself that isn’t “Alex’s little sister.”

33. Pervert Characters:
I guess Jonathan wins this one, since he is the most sexual character. It’s probably on his mind the most out of the Gargoyle cast.

34. Hippie Characters:
Alex is all for that “love and peace” and ”make love not war” stuff. He just doesn’t do drugs.

35. Yaoi/Yuri Characters:
I’ve yet to establish any specific canon pairings, but all of my characters are so internally linked that anybody could pair almost any one of them off with another. I suppose the most canon gay couple is Jonathan and Alex. So good luck future fangirls.

36. Are any of your characters based on real people?:
Um, Sara may be heavily based on my own teenage sister, but only because she’s a teen. Any other specific traits don’t mirror my actual sister’s at all.

37. Are any of your characters based on a cartoon/movie/show/comic book character?:
I can honestly say no. They all play specific roles that I created for them. Nobody else, not even models of others, could really fulfill that purpose.

38. Which of your character(s) is the most original?:
MOST original… I don’t know. What do YOU think?

39. Which character couple is the oldest?
Again, I haven’t actually established official couples or pairings. The only one really talked about is Donny and Bade (does that look like a fatherhood complex to you guys? Or does Bade just come off as a pedophile?), but theirs was one of the last relationships I thought about because Donny is a newer character.

40. Which character couple is the newest?:
I guess Bade and Donny.

41. Which of your characters are best friends?:
I think Bade and Alex have the strongest bond of friendship now that Alex and Jonathan’s ties have been so brutally tested.

42. Which of your characters are worst of enemies?:
Hannah and Jonathan. If this isn’t obvious then I’ve done something wrong.

ZomaS-M for Networking

First off, to all my readers, I’m so sorry for the delays. I’m expecting plenty of new updates and edits very soon, now that I don’t have to worry about homework this weekend. I hope that when I actually do upload something, it won’t disappoint!

I’m beginning to fall into the world of interweb networking for promotional reasons (that’s right, shameless self-promotion). So any friends, family, or fans who are interested can now add me on:

deviantart.com: [link]
myspace.com: [link]
livejournal.com: [link]

Other public pages are still being worked on, but when they become available I’ll let you know!



In lighter news…

Wendell: Wendell Carmen/Felix Haydn, is a difficult guy to keep in contact with. He sulks, you see. But as I was working the next chapters in my head, he leaned over my shoulder and mused, "I'm not liking the title." He’s a writer too, I figured his thoughts should be respected… That and I didn’t want him mad at me. I’m giving it some more thought, but I thought I’d ask anyway…

How does Wendell: The Woes of Felix Haydn grab you as a new working title?

I know that it seems like Wendell only just started, but it was never planned to be particularly long. As it stands, I’m almost half done! And the real party has barely started! Right now Wendell stands at about 61 pages with 15,426 words!

Gargoyle: In light of my blatant hatred for the way Stephanie Meyer has annihilated vampires for me lately (and it seems she’s out to destroy mermaids and sirens now too), I’m more determined than ever to make Gargoyle great. But the much-needed edits are slow. And let’s face it, the original draft was weak. I’m also worried that it may be pulling itself too long. Don’t get me wrong; every scene I wrote, I wrote because it needed to be there to move the plot or develop a character or other important stuff. There isn’t a single chapter written so far that I would consider filler or unimportant fluff. I’m hesitant to change the story, but I think some scenes may need to be cut for the next few drafts. I have no idea which yet.

Counting only the edits (which means up to Chapter 4 of Part 2, so forget about the other twenty-five or so chapters for a second), Gargoyle stands at about 50 pages with 14,295 words.



Thank you for being patient with me!
~ ZS-M

April 1st of this year was Jonathan Sicari's 69th birthday!

I'm thinking of creating some kind of OC or Original Story Meme in celebration, but I may not have time. If I did create a meme, would you fill it out?

And Jonathan likes tiramisu more than cake. Or dulce de leche crepes! And he'll take any red wine you have to offer. Because yes, he does expect each and every one of you to drink to his special day.



I borrowed this evaluation from .



A few things to consider when writing:

What reason(s) do you write for?
I don’t know why I started writing, but I know why I’ve kept it up. It makes me happy. It lets me vent, lets me think, lets me really use my mind… I write for myself, and happened to start out with something other people enjoyed and that was very encouraging. I do one day want to get my work published, because sharing my work alongside other talented writers means a lot to me (what I do really is a passion, which is why I like this community). But if I never get to the real professional level, I think I’ll still be happy knowing I’m doing what I love most.

Do you take your writing seriously?
Of course I do. Not only do I love the writing process more than anything else, but I think I have real potential to succeed with it.

If so, when did you start taking writing seriously?
It must have been at the start of high school. I’d written for fun before. My very very first novel, to this day unfinished, was an epic fantasy I started in middle school (I’ve been editing and rewriting what I currently have in secret). I loved it, but for some reason it didn’t satisfy my inner writer. But that changed in high school when I began having real English/writing classes with wonderful teachers who showed me what writing really involved. Characterization, style, technique, voice, symbolism… So many aspects that I had never grasped before. And I loved discovering them. I came up with the idea of Gargoyle then as a new beginning. And, well, here I am.

Where do you feel you stand as a writer?
That’s difficult to say because I have so little to go on. I have no official experience, since I’ve never submitted my work for publishing or anything. And I’ve never actually finished a novel. I wouldn’t call that inexperience, but there are plenty of things I haven’t done, and there’s always more to learn. So I would say I’m somewhere around “dreamer with potential.”

What do you feel you do well? (ie, characterisation, dialogue, imagery, etc.)
Characterization, I think, is my strong suit, and luckily that branches out into dialogue and gives it what I think is a natural feel. I did theatre and acting for a little while in high school, so I learned the basics on how to be different people. When that became creating new characters on my own, I found I had several people in my brain who were strong enough to speak for themselves. Writing really is the most acceptable form of schizophrenia.

What do you feel you struggle with?
I probably struggle most with diction. My ideas flow smoothly, but putting them to words can be a challenge. I have to scribble down those ideas before I lose them and return later to edit. And by ideas I mean everything from characterization and dialogue to plot twists and the symbolism behind a certain scene or detail. I know, it’s a little odd. A writer who has trouble writing? But it’s word choice I struggle with, not really voice or individual style or any of those other things a writer needs.

What do you most want to improve on?
I’ve got to get better about editing on my own the first time around to better my diction.

Do you have any questions to ask your readers?
- What do YOU think I need to improve on most?
- Is there anything about my work that makes it difficult for you to read (isn’t exciting enough, structure is plain, characters need more development, takes too long to get to the point, etc)?
- How does the dA community help you?



April 1st of this year was Jonathan Sicari's 69th birthday!

I'm thinking of creating some kind of OC or Original Story Meme in celebration, but I may not have time.

And Jonathan likes tiramisu more than cake. Or dulce de leche crepes! And he'll take any red wine you have to offer. Because yes, he does expect each and evry one of you to drink to his special day.