Author has written 8 stories for Romance. EXCITING NEWS!! Less Than Three Press is publishing a few of my stories. :D You can find them under my pen name, Julia Alaric, at their website: . At this point, there are three available and two more on the way. Perfect Planning is a little 3000 word story I wrote for their Valentine's Day collection about a guy whose been trying for years to figure out the perfect plan to ask out the man he's had a crush on since high school. I also have a fairytale in their collection Fairytales Slashed: Volume 4, which is a Beauty and the Beast retelling in which I try to focus on what happens after the beast becomes a man again, particularly if Beauty is not so very beautiful (since the beast is supposed to learn to look past the surface, after all). And, as of August 1st, the story I like best of everything I've ever written will be for sale. Dreamer is about an average guy with boring dreams who suddenly starts to encounter a mysterious stranger in his sleep, and... well, I won't give it away. But I'm really proud of that one. Two stories currently somewhere in the midst of the editing process, to be released at an unspecified date, are my contributions to the New Year's anthology they're putting together and the Bestiary anthology. My New Year story take on the theme is actually about a guy turning thirty, embarking on a new year, a new decade, and dealing with a few other significant changes in his life. My Bestiary story, Fire and Lightning, tells the tale of the hamadryad associated with Zeus' sacred oak tree, his oracle in Dodona, and her relationship with the Bennu bird of Egypt (aka the phoenix) over the five hundred years of one of the Bennu bird's life cycles. In my totally biased opinion, they're kind of awesome. Especially the Bestiary story. Most of my writing these days is being posted over on my livejournal, . Feel free to stop on by and read anything you like. I love to get comments; they help me know what to write next. :) In case you're curious about me: I am a happily married woman who enjoys reading a well-written, thoughtful romance once in a while. I teach for a living (K-12, several subjects), and I'm a bit of a grammar nerd. I love music, linguistics, and my family. Other things I like: my husband, my friends, music of just about any kind, learning about languages, my students, reading, watching stupid movies and laughing myself to tears, cooking, baking, eating... Lots of things, as long as they don't involve bad grammar or green peppers. I'm very anti-"love at first sight." Doesn't exist, folks. Infatuation at first sight? Yes. Lust at first sight? Most definitely. Love? Never--love requires knowledge of a person and some level of commitment to them, despite their nasty sides, and a willingness to change yourself when the relationship makes it clear that your only options are to storm off in denial with your pride in tact or to give up your pride and admit you've got work to do on yourself. It also carries with it an amazing ability to look past the beloved's faults and see what that person really is, or at least ought to be, and forgive the poor person for being imperfect and human. (When one's own pride doesn't interfere, that is.) That being said... after a few multi-year relationships, I did marry a guy who proposed three weeks after we crossed the friends line and started dating, and we've been together now for over eight years. There's a lot to be said for the importance of friendship and commitment in a marriage. I have absolutely nothing against cliches as long as they're well-written. (My own stories tend to be nothing but cliches, so what right would I have to object?) I think cliches exist because there is so much truth of the human experience within them, and that makes them totally worthwhile as far as I'm concerned. And there is nothing better, in my humble opinion, than a really great, schmoopy happy ending. In case you're curious about my stories: The Piper Calls and its follow-ups are the result of a prompt to write something in honor of Ratcatcher Day (i.e., the Pied Piper). I wanted to take it and fuse that idea with the myth of Hades and Persephone, only with some major changes--like making Persephone's character a guy, and making his trip to the underworld voluntary. I liked it enough that I kept writing about them; hence the little sequels. The main characters even make an appearance in my published novel, Dreamer. Making Amends was what came to mind when I read the May Flash Me Suddenly challenge. It's too long and too cliche to fit within the guidelines, but I kind of like it anyway. Love is a Piece of Cake was written for the first Flash Me Suddenly challenge. It won, but I wanted to revise it again within days of submitting it. I may at some point turn it into something longer, because I didn't quite get across the characterization I wanted to and some other things that just don't work with a word limit of 1000. Nobody Wants to be Alone is not perfect, and there are parts I don't love, but there are definitely parts I do. It turned out better than I had expected in most regards, given that I wrote it on a whim over a couple of weeks of a particularly boring summer vacation. A SKoW nominee. Diary, Diary Under the Mattress is a piece of writing I did for a friend a couple of years ago just for fun. I'm posting it mostly for the sake of making myself re-read it. All things considered, I don't think it's terrible, but it's not my best. The writing quality is meant to be like a diary, which makes me cringe a little. It was actually kind of the inspiration for "Nobody Wants to be Alone", which I like a hundred times better. To the Stars is definitely a bit out of the ordinary for me, at least in terms of setting, but as you'll notice in my introduction to the first chapter, I didn't get to pick the setting. It was the result of a sort of dare among some friends of mine: assign the writer a setting, an important characteristic for each of the main characters, and five elements that must be incorporated somehow into the story. I'd rewrite it, but I don't care enough about it to put in the time. The Futility of Planning kind of sprang out of nowhere. It's under revision, because I really didn't like the last few chapters of the original version but I loved the potential of the first chapter. The revised version is on hiatus for a while while I try to get my life back together (see A/N on the last posted chapter if you want to know why) and try to sort out where I want it to go. The characters aren't cooperating, and while normally I like to let them be the bosses of their own lives, they're making the story weaker at this point. Maybe they'll pull it together after a stern talking to and get back in line and I can finish the last few chapters. Or maybe I'll just pull it down altogether and start over again. Currently reading: Gwyn Morgan, 69 AD: The Year of the Four Emperors. Lots of schmoopy, happy romances on my e-reader. Current pet peeve: Using only one comma around an appositive (e.g., "James, the janitor was working today" as opposed to the correct "James, the janitor, was working today"). Currently enjoying: Performing symphony music in ridiculous quantities at a music festival. The Civil Wars. Elbow. Peanut butter cookies. Tea. |