For those of you who wondered if I was eaten by JAWS (in 3-D, no less,) or thought maybe I didn’t care about you anymore, well you just swallow those lies before you even tell them to yourself. 1. Jaws would never eat me… I’m too bitter, and 2. If I didn’t care about you, I wouldn’t be here right now, would I?

Life has been incredibly busy. Since James and I launched PopArmy.com, I’ve been juggling everything between work, Pop Army and KidWonderful, and it hasn’t been easy. On the other hand, it’s been incredibly rewarding on an emotional level, so yay for that.
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For those of you who have been following my efforts recently, you know I kicked off my own parenting/kids website called Kid Wonderful on August 26th. Thanks to the combined volunteer work of great friends/writers like Nicole Ireland, Patrick Pillars and David Sobkowiak, Kid Wonderful is faring well, growing traffic-wise and gathering a loyal readership.

After losing our jobs just near the end of July, James and I spent a lot of time considering our options. We are building a future together, and one of the many things that brought us together in the first place was how well we worked together as a team. When faced with a hard trial ahead of us at a time when things were starting to look up, we knew we had to combine our awesome power to do something we both loved that would also potentially help us build our future.

Writing is something we love, and combined with networking and meeting new people, we’ve discovered over the last year how much we really enjoy creating online content. We enjoy it even more when we know our efforts and focus is centered around things that matter to us. That was why I started Kid Wonderful. Being a mother, having a family, exploring parenthood… those are some of the most important things in my life, so I wanted to put my passion behind it and share that passion with the world.

When James and I started talking about creating our own connected network of sites months ago, one of the first thoughts we both agreed on was centering a site on entertainment. We both love movies, television and anyone who’s ever listened to Podcaturday, our joint venture with Acadia from Superficial Gallery knows how much we like to talk about entertainment and celebrities. And so was born Pop Army.

If you haven’t had a chance to check out Pop Army yet, I hope you do. Be sure to subscribe to our Twitter Feed and “like” us on Facebook if you hang out there. We’ve got an awesome team of volunteer writers who will be submitting their own thoughts, including our managing editor and dear friend, Nicole Ireland, Chandra Jenkins, Tony Faville, Heather Faville, Patrick Pillars and my Internet BFF, Acadia Einstein.

This is just the beginning. We have big ideas for creating a network of sites under our very own brand: Double J Media, which you may have seen in the past on our short stories for sale. There is great content going up on the sites every day, and before long The Inner Bean will be getting a makeover as well, so stay tuned, and thanks again for sticking by us during this difficult time.

This last month has been horrendous. Despite scrambling to find ways to get through everything financially, we’ve worked incredibly hard on other projects in hopes of establishing a means for the future. All that hard work and effort has definitely been worth it, but my creativity has greatly suffered. In fact, I had not written a single creative word since mid-July, and knowing that was really starting to bring me down.
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As I sat down to rewatch the last three episodes of True Blood with Squeenager (who missed them because we were out of town and her dad doesn’t have television,) I felt a giddy sense of pre-mourning upon realizing there were only three episodes left in this season. I almost cried, but then realized if I started to cry about True Blood, James would probably have me committed. As much as I would love a break from life and all its mundane responsibilities, I’m relatively sure they would not let me watch True Blood in the nuthouse. Bastards…

With only three episodes left, the action and tension are winding up. So much is going on, my brain is rapidly wrapping around it all, trying to figure out how it’s going to end. If you haven’t been watching, don’t click the link or you’ll get spoiled like that bad-egg recall.
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It’s Monday, and you’ve probably noticed there was no podcaturday on Saturday. Anyone who checks out my site on a regular basis probably noticed there haven’t been a lot of other things going on here lately either. No Tesla Tuesdays, no commitment reports, no squeenage wisdom, no me pushing the world to buy buy buy my fiction so I can live live live off the profits. Jack in the Green was supposed to start up last month and that didn’t happen either. Acadia will probably laugh maniacally when he reads this because he always says i try to do too much. Now I don’t do anything… or so it feels.

I want to say I’m sorry, but like Pee Wee Herman in Cheech in Chong’s Nice Dreams, I’m not sorry I took the money, nyah! I’m not sorry about a lot of things lately, and that sort of scares me. My attitude has gone to pot, and I’m not sure if there is anything that can pull me up out of this dark place right now.

My only shred of happiness is my family, and all the stress surrounding applying for our K1 visa and knowing I am coming up on spending almost a month apart from james is making me feel so drained. The expense in a time when I have no idea if I will even get my job back is more than I can take sometimes. I just want to get married, have my job back, have one place where we live instead of two, write fiction again… feel sane.

And the truth is, I do not feel the least bit sane right now. I feel like all the marbles fell out when I tipped my head to the side and then they got accidentally flushed down the toilet.

The worst part is, I’m on an anti-anxiety med because of all this stress from the last 18 months of my life. Over the weekend, I ran out and have been taking a mirror molecule drug that makes me feel like crap. I went to pick up a handful of my prescription today (because god only knows when I’ll get my last paycheck,) and the stupid pharmacy was out of my stupid drug. Come back tomorrow, she said. Then James asked how much it was going to cost for 5 pills, cos that’s what I’m getting to tie me over, and she said, “$27.95.” Dude, that’s like more than $5 a pill. I could puke.

I want to be happy and smiley and smartass and all that good stuff that makes me me, but it’s not working right now. I keep breaking down and in the beginning I always felt better after a good cry. Now whenever I lose it, I just feel less able to get up and brush myself off again.

I did watch True Blood and that made me happy for 49 minutes, so there’s always that. I’ll be back with a mid-week true blood rambling later in the week.

For now, thanks for reading this through, if you managed to get to the end without wanting to punch me for being such a whiny baby. If you do want to punch me, maybe that would help me stop feeling sorry for myself and get back to my regularly scheduled life.

For those of you who thought I was possibly dead as a result of Acadia’s cursing me back for making him barf on Podcaturday, I’m not here to talk about me today. Instead, let’s talk about True Blood…

Since it’s Thursday, I’m going to assume you watched the last episode, and if you didn’t, I advise you to stop reading now. If you don’t, I can’t be responsible for spoiling the things you didn’t see.
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It’s Sunday. You probably already knew that, but to tell you the truth, I forgot. It’s been such a ridiculous and stupid week, the only reason I know it’s Sunday is because True Blood is on tonight and it’s all I’ve been looking forward to since last Sunday.

I’m sorry. I’m down this week. Like super down.
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Desperate times call for desperate measures, and with everything going on right now, it will be months before I am able to write the last two stories I wanted to add to the collection. With ten additions complete and an added bonus story not published as part of the collection, the electronic compilation includes twelve short stories ranging from science fiction and horror to dark fantasy and suspense.

The whole collection has brand new cover art and an 8,600 zombie apocalypse story called “Two Weeks,” which was originally published in Book of the Dead: A Zombie Anthology last July.

As of tonight, you can order a PDF version of Dark Journeys: A Short Story Collection for just $2.99 right here on my website.

After ordering the PDF version directly from me, I will email you the PDF within 24 hours.

For those with electronic readers like the Kindle and the Sony eReader, it is also NOW AVAILABLE on Amazon.com and Smashwords.com in a much wider variety of formats.

Thank you to all who have supported this Dark Journey from beginning to end. With James and I facing some tough times right now, it’s really meant a lot to both of us to have our friends gather around to support us.

I hope you enjoy the full collection as a whole.

So the old saying goes, “When life hands you lemons, make lemonade,” but I’m not thirsty right now. What else should I do?

For those who haven’t been following the situation, my fiance James and I were dealt a pretty cruddy blow yesterday. James was let go from his job and may get called back in 2-3 months, but the operative word in question there is “MAY.” There are no guarantees. While I didn’t lose my job completely, I took a 3/4 pay cut and currently have about 15 more hours per week on my hands than usual.

I want to shake my fist at the world and scream, “WTF?” but I won’t because I’ve been through worse and I have custom-fitted big girl panties to prove it.
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Today has been a rather cruddy day. So cruddy, I don’t even feel like going into it in any detail. I just want to go to bed and turn off the alarm. Sleep late tomorrow and wake up with a new perspective.

I think I will.

Before I do, I want you to tell me your day was good. Tell me something wonderful that happened to you today. Even if it was just that you got three extra fries in your McDonald’s Extra Value Meal, or you found an unexpected pickle in a jar at the back of the fridge.

Your happy makes me happy. So get to the happymaking, please.