Emerald City ComicCon

Well, it has been a little over a week since my last posting.  I am now ready to commence with the Emerald City ComicCon (ECCC) in Seattle, starting today and lasting through the weekend.  Or as I call it, Nerdvana.

If you aren't really sure what a ComicCon is, well, it is a convention that honors/appreciates the realm of scifi/fantasy/horror in comics/books/films/television as well as role-playing games, cosplay, video games, and other related games .  It's a Star Trek Convention on steroids.  Of course, Nerd Mecca would be the San Diego International ComicCon, which is the original and longest running comic convention.

The ComicCon scene is one that is often thought of more as an underground cult, but in recent years has become a much larger entity.  I attribute this largely with the popularization of many Marvel comics into movies.  With the huge success of Avengers (and all their contributing films), Guardians of the Galaxy, Spiderman, and X-men, the ComicCon scene has really grown. 

Your comics of today are not the same as your grandfather's comics, either.  Things have changed so much in just the last few years, especially with the evolution of the Graphic Novel (which is basically a comic book aimed at adults, and I will use them interchangeably from here out).  You've got your traditional Marvel and DC comics, but now I would like to introduce you to one of my other favorite comic companies that you may not have heard of before:  Image Comics.  

Image Comics is the company that I am keeping a close eye on right now.  You may know about the company from the "Spawn" series, but they are looking excellent for new and exciting upcoming novels.  They are revealing some really great new graphics lately, particularly "The Wicked + The Divine", "Lazarus", and "Wytches".  Of course, I am looking forward to meeting the creators/artists/inkers/etc. of these great novels at the ECCC this weekend.  

If I can teach anything from this entry today, it would be that the comic/graphic novel is a great source of story and adventure.  It not only has to be an intriguing tale, but the art must be consistent and satisfying to the reader.  I praise the creators of these books and look forward to reading more that they have to offer.

So, off to ECCC and stay tuned for videos, photos and more from the convention this year.  

Am I really Evil?

Many people ask me, "Why Dr. Evil?"

I thought it was obvious, but I guess not.  There is, of course, the movie Austin Powers, with the character Dr. Evil, who is so wonderful that words cannot express it.  But he has a line in the first film that is quite iconic and has become something of a mantra for me.

Dr. Evil is attending a counselling meeting with his son, and the therapist addresses him as Mr. Evil.  He then states, "It's Doctor Evil.  I didn't go through seven years of evil medical school to be called Mister, thank you very much."  This line says so much to me!

I am often asked about how much schooling I went through to get to this point in my life.  Well, after high school I did four years of college to acquire my undergraduate degree, a bachelor of science in zoology. I did a year of graduate work and then attended medical school for four years.  I then trained for a year in internship and then four years of residency before becoming a full-fledged physician who can practice on her own.

If you're doing your math, that's 14 years after high school.  That is a lot of work.

I admit it:  I don't look like a doctor.  I am often told that I look too young to be a doctor. And when you are not in the medical field, you may not realize that patients will tell certain things to doctors and certain things to nurses, but not to both.  So when I walk into a room, even after I introduce myself, a patient may still hold out on me waiting for the "doctor" to come into the room.  Frustrating, yes.  But I have learned to live with it.

Nevertheless, I have still earned my way into this realm and it was 14 years of hard work.  So, I didn't go through "seven" years of evil medical school to be called Miss, thank you very much. Every once in a while, it wouldn't hurt if some people can realize how much work it takes to get here.  But the moment you're here, it doesn't get much easier. Especially as a female in this business, there is still a lot of work to do.

I rely a lot on my writing to help me through those difficult times.  It's a great escape, but there are also times when I might bring just a touch of that real world into my stories.  I don't like to write medical dramas because I don't like to read them (and don't get me started on TV medical dramas.  I hope Greys Anatomy dies soon!).  But just a bit of that knowledge can add just enough reality into a story to give it the right amount of depth. To those of you who may read some of my stuff, if I put medical "stuff" in that story, you can rest assured that it is real.  I have heard the sounds those machines make, and smelled the things in some of those rooms.  And you can thank me later for not adding "too much detail", because the average person probably couldn't handle that detail.

As to the Evil part:  who's to say?  Maybe I am Evil.  I really like Pantera, so who knows.

Until next time,

"I want one million dollars!"

Creating an epic tale: Exercise 1

I want to introduce you to one of my favorite writing exercises.  It's something I created as a way to "warm up" just before writing or when I'm in the process of starting a new story.  I have also discovered that it is great in groups just for the hell of it!  You will have so much fun doing this exercise.

I call it:  The Body in the Bathtub
(cue the creepy music . . . .)

First, I tell you that there is a Body in the Bathtub.  Now it's your turn to take it from there.  But here are a few steps to organize your thinking until we come up with an awesome story.  I want you to engage with the scene that unfolds in your brain when you hear that there is a body in the bathtub.  The image conjured is different for everyone, that's what makes this so fun to do in groups.  So, we need to answer the 6 main questions:  Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How.  For a great story, the reader may not know the answer to all these questions right away.  It's the job of the writer to know everything, though, even if the reader never knows the answers.

Who:  Is it a woman?  A man?  Young?  Old?  What color is his/her hair?  Ethnicity?  You might think it's an attractive woman in her mid-thirties while your friend imagines an old man in his late seventies.  In addition, who discovered the body?  The cleaning lady? A relative?  The cops?  There may even be aspects of the Who that the reader will never know, but the author will always know.

What:  Is there anything in the room that accompanies this body?  A book, perhaps.  Or maybe a gun?  Maybe there is a cordless phone (or corded, depending on the When in this scenario) on the ground.  Is there a curtain around the bathtub, or is it one of those huge jetted tubs that fill a room the size of your average living room?

When:  Is this a modern room, with all the latest amenities?  Is this in the future, where there are monitors and screens everywhere to control the temperature of the bathwater and tell you the time of day or what is on television that can be viewed right from the mirror while the person bathes?  Is it the middle ages, when the bathtub is lined in iron and filled from a bucket heated over a fire?

Where: Is it someone's home?  Is it a hotel?  Maybe it's a cast-off, old, clawfooted bath tub lying in waste in a landfill somewhere (Oh!  didn't think of that one, right?)

Why:  Here is where the writer gets really creative.  There will always be a why, but the author may never tell you.  It may be something only he or she knows the answer to, but in order to set the scene and tell the story, the author must know everything about the scene, even if it's something the reader never knows.  This, of course, is why is there a body in the bathtub to begin with?  Murder?  Accident?  Suicide?  A hit?


How:  This will often link with the why, but again, may be something that the author never tells the reader.  A good mystery will often have the detective determine the How, such as in shows like Bones and Castle.  Mysteries thrive on the How.  But what about a good Fantasy?  Sometimes the How is the beginning of the story that triggers the quest.  Was it with a knife?  A gun?  A good case of Avada Kedavra (Cedric Diggory didn't kill himself!)?  Also, how was the body discovered?

Hopefully this will make for some deep thinking and maybe some good fun in your little group.  I find this writing prompt entertaining on long road trips.  Everyone joins in and it's really amazing to see how everybody comes up with something different.

Have fun!  Please share some of your exercises here. I would love to hear what you guys come up with.  And feel free to share this exercise on social media.  The more the merrier!

Until next time,

It was Colonel Mustard in the Bathroom with the Candlestick!

Music to my ears

What is my favorite music?  Metal, of course.

But there are so many kinds of Metal.  Heavy metal, Hair Metal, Death Metal, Thrash, Industrial, Speed . . . .

It doesn't matter.  I pretty much like them all.  But I also enjoy many other genres (except Country! Down with that crap!).  I find that my trends in music taste also fluctuate with my writing.  When I was writing my young adult adventure set in the American Old West, I often listened to old blues and American folk  music from the turn of the century mixed with a little Mark Knopfler.  Now, that is far from Metal.

As long as I have been writing, I have been using music as a form of outlining.  Many creative writing courses and papers have been written on the benefits of outlining the story, but I have never been one to write out your typical outline.  But what I love doing is making a "soundtrack" for my stories, as though it would be the background music for certain scenes or montages in a movie.  So all this time I was really an outliner. I just didn't realize it.

I have been working on a trilogy over the last year or so.  It's a modern urban horror/fantasy involving demons, angels, and us simple humans caught in the middle of an eternal battle.  For me, that music involves Industrial metal (Nine Inch Nails and Five Finger Death Punch helps a lot) as well as some simple piano ballads (this is where Piano Tribute Players really works).  And for any other writers out there, check out Epic Soundtracks.  There are so many albums to work with.  The best way to describe this stuff is to say it is movie music without a movie.  This music is so wonderful to write with that I don't know what I did without it.  It really helps to mold an action scene, especially.

When I think I might be going through a dry spell in my writing or a block, I listen to music.  Thank heavens for the iPod!  When I need more inspiration for my action scenes:  Epic Soundtracks.  Maybe add a little romance:  London Grammer, Birthday Massacre or Florence and the Machine.  Something light hearted:  I'm loving OK Go, Bastille, Imagine Dragons.

So if you hear me listening to something with a little more of a Celtic flair, just know that I will be working on a modern fantasy with a King Arthur twist.  No, my music tastes have not changed.  I'm just writing something new!

Until next time,

Bang your head!  Metal Health will drive you mad!

Ghosts are NOT scary

So I get asked a lot if I'm afraid of ghosts.  That's because I am an amateur "ghost hunter", and not just because it's the popular thing to do.  I've been doing paranormal investigations since I was quite young.  You could call me a "hipster ghost hunter", because I did it before it was cool.  So the answer to the above question is NO, I'm not afraid of ghosts.  I'm afraid of drowning, or not being able to breathe, but I'm not afraid of the paranormal.

You see, I was exposed to spirit activity at a very young age.  I won't go into too much detail right here, at least not yet, but I will tell you how I became a paranormal investigator (since I don't care much for the term ghost hunter).

I was about 11 or 12 years old and I was at home watching my three younger brothers one night while my parents were out with my sister for some school related thing.  We lived in a turn of the century two story home with a basement.  It was getting late and my brothers wanted to "camp out" in the living room.  They had gathered their sleeping bags, placed them out in front of the TV, and fell asleep while watching the television that night.  I checked on them once more before lying down in my parents bedroom, waiting for them to come home.  I knew it what time they would arrive, which was only about an hour away, and I lay down without any intent to go to sleep.

The children's bedrooms were on the upper floor while my parents' room was just below my bedroom.  Shortly after I laid down to rest, I heard footsteps from the second floor.  Loud footsteps.  Stomping back and forth, coupled with something that sounded like a heavy dragging noise.  I hadn't even closed my eyes when this started to happen.  I got up, sure that my brother's had gotten out of their sleeping bags and were upstairs playing around.  But when I went into the living room, everyone was sound asleep.  I opened the door to the steps leading upstairs and no lights were on and I could no longer hear the footsteps.

But it was then that I could hear whispering coming from the kitchen.  I walked in there, not sure of what I would find.  No matter how close I came to the kitchen, though, the whispering seemed to get further away until I could follow it through the kitchen and into the steps leading to the basement.  That's where I stopped.  I knew I was not prepared to go further, because down those steps and into the dark space below the house I could hear several voices whispering as though there was a quiet cocktail party happening downstairs.

At that point, I hurried back into my parents bedroom, turning all the lights on (of course) and waited for my parents to return.  That was the longest hour of my life, and I didn't tell them anything about my experience when they returned.  I was just glad that they were home.

It was then that I vowed to myself to figure out what was going on.  I did not tell anyone about it yet because I wanted to figure it out before going to someone and sounding like a silly child that was trying to scare my brothers.  Whenever we had our family trip to the library every week (those were the days before you could research anything on the internet), I would seek out books on the paranormal and hauntings.  I devised my own experiments and investigations based on what I had read.  I even kept journals about the things I tested and the results.

So, no, I'm not afraid of ghosts.  At least, not anymore.  I educated myself about them and the fear will disappear from something if you understand what it is all about.  I now seek to help others understand the phenomena as well.  I hope I have helped others when they tell me about things that happen in their homes and I bring my specialty kit (which is so much more advanced than when I was a kid!).  I can show them that the bump they hear in the night is just the house settling or the dog knocking things over.  But sometimes, it really is a person on another plain that is invisible to us just walking through it's existence.

Someday I will hope to bring my childhood experiences with the paranormal into the form of one of my stories.  I have had so many, too many to write in here, and these events are wonderful fodder for story telling.  And these experiences have not just been limited to my childhood.  I am currently in the process of compiling my paranormal experiences during OB/GYN residency in a novel, dazzled up of course in the form of a thrilling fiction.  This one has been in the works for a very long time, but when the muse of writing tells me to continue with this, then I will.

In the meantime, one of the books I ended up loving but totally freaked me out as a kid was "The Most Haunted House in England" by Harry Price, who was a ghost hunter before it was cool too.  This was his real-life account of his investigation of the Borley Rectory in England at the turn of the century.  I recommend reading this, but you will want to do it with the lights on.

Until next time,

LLAP (live long and prosper)
(in remembrance of Leonard Nimoy, who is hopefully watching all of us with a smile)

Stories always start at the beginning

So here it is!  The start of my new blog.

I wanted to start a platform to just connect with people about my many hobbies/desires/jobs, etc.  And BOOM!  Blog!

I had never considered a blog before, but then I have been reading so many new blogs out there and thought, hey, why not me?

So today's thought is:  In a world of so many possibilities, why limit yourself?

I am currently in the process of writing my 11th novel.  That's right.  Number 11, and that is probably calling it a little short because I have written many freehand stories over my many years that I haven't counted all of them.  But there is a solid 11 in my computer.  I have been writing since I can remember.  I think my first "book" was a picture book was something I put together on yellow legal paper that my dad had given me.  I was eight years old at the time and I had cut up the paper into the appropriate sized squares, stapled the "binding", and then put together my story. It was a fantasy story about a dragon living in a cave that befriended a girl who lived in a town at the base of the mountain. All of this, of course, was inspired by many things:  a series of small caves on the hillside that one could see out the back window of my house.  But there were so many other things that went into creating that story.

I love movies. No.  You don't understand.  I LOVE MOVIES.  And the movies of my childhood inspired a lot of what I wanted to write.  I decided at a very young age that some movies needed a little tweaking.  A new scene here.  An additional character there.  And sometimes, I decided that the ending needed to be entirely re-written.  So, that's what I did.  I made a story of my own, adding the characters I wanted and changing the ending the way IT SHOULD HAVE ENDED!  Even now, I get so frustrated when a movie just misses the mark.  I find myself shouting at the screen (usually with the little voice in my head), saying "why did you do that?  You just ruined it!"

I soon found myself making entirely new stories.  Now, there isn't a day that goes by that I don't have a story or three floating around my brain.  It has gotten to a point that I must write regularly to just clear out the jungle growing inside my skull.

So that is how I have 11 full length novels in my computer, and that list will continue to grow until the day I die.

It wasn't until about two years ago that I seriously considered getting at least one of them published.  I always felt that my stories were good.  Hell, I would love to read something like that!!  But I knew that I wasn't telling the story quite right, but I didn't know what to do about it.  Like anybody else, criticism is hard to take.  I wanted to share my stories, but I was afraid that nobody else would like them.  Then, I went to my first writer's conference.  That made such a difference in my writing.  I finally figured out what I was doing wrong and how to fix it.  I learned about self-editing and the business of books.  I finally could see that there was a possibility of letting someone else other than my parents read my books!!!

I could go on, but I will save that for another time.  Right now, though, I am in the process of submitting on of my favorite novels to an agent and I hope to be able to share it with the world soon.  It was my first attempt at young adult writing and I was kind of shocked at how much I enjoyed it.  From friends and family that have read it, I thank you for your input and we shall keep our fingers crossed that this will be available at some point to all of you!

So until next time,

"I want sharks with friggin' laser beams on their friggin' heads!"

Coming up:
Why do I ghost hunt?
My job and my writing
Why KISS is the greatest band ever
Painting is a form of therapy