The graphics page is done, the one that has links to all the galleries. I decided the links would be in the form of photos, so I drew frames for all of them, vaguely character/setting themed. There's the palace, Alice's room, Hare's "house" (even if we never see it) and Hatter... I guess. lol The last one I really winged, and I kind of love how it turned out.

You know what makes me the most excited, other than how it really transformed the page? That I worked on these for hours when it was really hot out and I'd been super cranky. It showed me just how motivated I must have been to push through this awful time of year.

I slept with an air conditioner for the first time, tonight, though.

Maybe it's all up from here :O

Okay, before I begin, did anyone else notice that LJ switched the locations of the "delete entry" and "save entry"? Why ever would they do that? Yesterday, I was at my personal journal trying to update my Max Schreck gallery post, and I accidentally deleted the whole thing and had to go back to the "ghost page", and remake it with that as a reference.

Anyway, clearly I haven't been updating here. I've kind of just been in a summer haze, too hot and correspondingly tired to get anything done. It's always been my worst creative season because I kind of get a type of seasonal depression. Some people can't stand winter and having it be cloudy outside every day, but I can't stand too much heat and sun. And this week has been awful. Today and yesterday are 100 degrees (although for some reason the apartment is staying very bearable today, thank Jesus.)

Finally, I had gotten done so little this summer that guilt was eating me, and I wasn't helping myself with ignoring summer by not-writing, so I made a schedule that I actually felt determined to carry through with. I want to have a chapter of HT each week and to finish a long hiatus'd Adventures in Wonderland short story, Trying Tuesday.

In as few words as possible, Nosferatu has not been something I've been overly into because of a fan on Tumblr who hasn't been very nice. It was stressing me out a lot, so I called it quits. Nosferatu in Love has been collecting cobwebs. But I'm hoping when Autumn starts to look pretty Halloween-y, that it'll be a lot of fun to work on. And I'll have been seeing my favorite teacher who knows all about my Nosey-addiction, so just her presence will be inspiring.

In the mean time, I don't know, I just... I've spent a lot of time fangirling about vampires and generally dark stuff, and when I realized I needed a break, a hopeless wave of nostalgia hit me and I missed Adventures in Wonderland. I missed my home. I missed all the thoughts I had about their world, and of Hatter and Hare, while I was in the backyard, or sitting on the front deck among my mom's plants, or drinking tea at the kitchen bar. I almost worried that AIW left with my home, because I was so happy and inspired there and when moving into an apartment, things got to feel very claustrophobic and different. So many things feel missing now that I feel like I want to put something together that was broken. So, I wandered back to AIW, posted at aiwchuckleheads, unblocked someone I no longer had hard feelings for, and, very luckily and unexpectedly, met this sweet and interesting girl on Tumblr who is an AIW fan, but she also runs a wonderful Alice in Wonderland blog called She Still Haunts Me Phantomwise. She inspired me to learn a little more about Lewis Carroll, and I've told her a bit about Max Schreck, so it's been kind of healing having a positive person write his name, and talk about all kinds of things we both like, like the Disney parks and Phantom of the Opera. I showed her a bootleg recording of Reece Holland (who played Hare in AIW) playing Raoul opposite Michael Crawford as the Phantom, speaking of which, and she was thrilled!

So, as I told you, I'm working on a fanfic again, and I was even laughing about it this morning. I decided that I would tweak my ritual, and instead of typing/translating my all German biography about Mr. Schreck, I would be writing Trying Tuesday. I will post it after this update!

And then there's He's There, which sounded like it'd been forgotten, but it hasn't, I'm just having a little trouble. By Sunday, I should have chapters 48 and 49 finished, and I'll continue from there, even though I neglected to write chapters 43 - 47 (though truthfully, 43 and 44 do have a number of pages written that I don't know if I'll edit or even keep.) I'm getting more into writing it as I find myself more frustrated, funny enough. And you'll think it hilarious what I'm using as inspiration -- The Twilight Series. I downloaded all the movies, and I'm going to watch them just to remember how not to make a dramatic YA romance set in the Pacific Northwest. But to remember what it's like to have your cake and expect to eat it. I don't know, it just works for me right now. XD

My question to those who read He's There is this, though: do you want me to post chapter 48 onward? Do you care that you're missing some of the plot? I wouldn't post it publicly, but if you want to know what I'm doing under cut, I would oblige, because I like feedback.

Okay, so... that's the full story. I'll feel happier once I've written more, but not yet.
-J

I lose my paid account in two days, but I'm going to go on like normal even though I probably won't have my poor icons anymore and ads will be invading my page. lol I'm pretty sure that I can keep the layout because css codes are for plus accounts too. I saved up almost six dollars on my paypal account, so I was almost half-way there, but I'll just have to wait for a time when I've got money (this summer?) and then I can really appreciate my paid account again? XD

Anyway, it's really really weird having the freedom again to do what I please creatively. It's not that Crystal Palace was making me feel like an art slave! It's more like by the last couple illustrations, I was worn out, even though I did them all in the span of 2 months, give or take. It's really hard keeping the poster a secret, but there's no site, and that's all I've got to hold on to, to get people to visit it.

Kate's going to be coming home from a trip soon. I know this because I emailed her and asked if she'd like to do some writing with me, for anything she likes. She doesn't usually have ideas, but I do. XD I proposed we could do an AIW one-shot with the plot-bunny I had about the hot-tub, or Crystal Palace 4, part one. And honestly? I couldn't give a shit which she picks. I would be proud to produce a one-shot, and I'd be proud to start CP4. We have the first part of that completely down in our heads, so there's no doubt it'd be fantastic, and I so miss her humor... I had hoped, actually, that in the afterglow of that, she would be up for editing CP3 here and there with me, maybe together at her house or mine so we could read it aloud and act it out. I've always just completely loved acting out this family. My mom says it's interesting seeing me transform into other people, especially Akira, who has enough dramatic facial drops, mouth stretching, and hand swishing to make his impersonation very obvious. But yeah, if we could do this, it would make CP3 feel so much more complete. I could do the site later this year knowing that all the material was what it was supposed to be and we were sharing our polished treasure.

Still, there has been no luck at all with the Crystal Palace Facebook page, though. I got a couple new members from DA the other day after I whored on my account journal, but mostly I've just got charitable friends being nice and liking the page even though half don't know wtf CP really is, let alone that it's so inappropriate. XD Even still, the FB page idea seems appealing to me...

I had thought of making one for He's There when I start updating regularly, because I know it would garner fans who I didn't know who could spread it about. But then I thought... is that really something I want to do? Keep attempting to make it popular when it's not even published yet? I have a lot more fears for HT than CP about it being plagiarized. In fact, I've known from the get-go that aspiring authors don't do such stupid things as posting every full chapter of their project online in more than one place. I've been going by the naive logic that it's not good enough to be stolen, and I need too much validation from others. Really, I can't imagine having and realizing my visions into art or websites and not posting them, as I'm a naturally sharing person.

Besides, it might end up being a big tease if I made a FB page. I have kind of been thinking on this for a while, and... the plan might be that I don't post the last 5+ chapters at all, except here, under a friends cut. And, of course, I'll send them to my beta, and show them to close friends like Kate, or teachers at UO, provided it's relevant. I don't want to fuck it up and have ALL of my hard work available to who even knows, you know? Actually, this summer, I'll probably want to work on printing all the chapters out, even though they're unedited, and sending them to myself in the mail as a home-made copyright.

It's kind of weird thinking that I need to protect something long and (in my eyes) important just in case someone thinks it's "so promising" they should steal it and try to finish and publish it themselves. But it's people who succumb to the weird thought and don't protect their stuff who probably end up fucked. Normal people every day protect their work. I have to remember that it's normal and not arrogant!

Well, that's pretty much that. Any day now I will be working on the HT plot and figuring out how to save chapter 43. It's funny to think a year ago, I was working on ch36 (*cries at almost zero progress*), in my car, hot, at the dock parking lot, trying to escape my shitty house situation. I'm glad that isn't now. I'm going to have to be imagining a lot of stress in my story from here on, and it's good to know I can do it and come back to a peaceful world.

P.S. Icon luv. ♥ Giry attention; I just had to.