JIAI JOUWA Character Profile 2: Saya Nemoto

Riding on the coattail's of Jun's profile, we now bring you her main love interest and second main character of the JIAI JOUWA series, Saya. Unlike Jun, who has appeared in various other stories, "Daite." will mark Saya's first official appearance in the canon. I have been promoting her for almost a year now though, so she should look at least a little familiar! (If you've ever taken the character matchmaker quiz at the interactive site and gotten Saya as your match, well, now you'll know who you've been matched with!)

Here we go!

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BASICS:
  
Name: Sayaka "Saya" Nemoto  (根本紗華) (She often writes her first name in hiragana: さやか)
Birthday: February 4th, 1987
Zodiac (Western): Aquarius
Zodiac (Eastern): Rabbit
Nationality: Japanese
Birthplace: Shimane Prefecture
Height: 5'0
Weight: 92 lbs. 
Voice: Medium
Speech Patterns: Neutral

LIKES/DISLIKES: 

Fave Color: Blues and Greens
Fave Food:  Breakfast foods
Fave Drink: Tea
Fave Music: Whatever is playing anywhere
Clothing Style:  Shorts (or pants if it's really cold) with a T-shirt or sweater.
Hobbies: Traveling, meeting new people, going outdoors

CHARACTER:

Family:  Mother, Father, Grandfather, Grandmother, Younger brother 
Sexuality: Lesbian
Partner: None
Best Friend: Has acquaintances scattered throughout the country
Occupation(s): Professional WWOOFer, Temp worker
Comes Off As: Hardworking, quiet, analytical
Sub/Dom: Switch, but often initiates things.

PARAGRAPHS OF BIOGRAPHY STUFF:

Sayaka, who prefers to go by "Saya" as it isn't as feminine, was born in the southwestern prefecture of Shimane, the second least populated prefecture in Japan. Although technically not too far from the metro area of Hiroshima, Saya grew up on the far side of a mountain range and only ever knew her own intimate world growing up, full of farmland, traditional houses, and close-knit communities and families. She also only ever knew the small town, conservative mindset growing up. Her family struggled to support itself with odd jobs and community assistance, fostering an attitude to do little with material things in Saya's early life. During high school, something happened that caused her to drop out and eventually leave her tiny rural town. 

Fed up with the life her community tried to feed her, Saya decided to see the rest of Japan and modern society on her own terms. She quickly became a professional "WWOOFER," or someone who does odd jobs around the country in exchange for room and board - and in Saya's case, a very modest payment that covers her costs to get around. Her forte is working on rural farms like the ones she grew up around. Basically, anything that lets her do some physical labor outdoors is something she loves. 

Saya does not typically cultivate close relationships. She learned from an early age that most people and their ideologies are not to be trusted, so she keeps her friendly acquaintances at a safe distance  and does not let them know her too well. Therefore she has many "friends" she can visit and crash with across Japan, but no one she would call a true confidant. 

When she's not WWOOFing in the mountains of Hokkaido, the seasides of Kyushu, or the fertile plains of Chubu and Shikoku mikan groves in between, Saya bides her time in metro areas like Nagoya, Osaka, and sometimes Tokyo, where she stays with acquaintances and does temp jobs if she's staying for more than a month. 

Saya may not have many long-term goals or ambitions, but she does have one thing: the fact that she lives for no one but herself, an idea that never occurred to her while growing up in Shimane. However, she is not opposed to leaving some roots in one place for a little while - as in maybe once every other month "a little while." Traveling is in her blood, and the thought of settling down anywhere for more than a few weeks is near traumatizing. Saya is not the type of woman to give up her freedom to be on her own and discover the world at her leisure. Not even for love.

...MAYBE

JIAI JOUWA Character Profile 1: Jun Isoya

"There comes a time in every marketing ploy UH I MEAN campaign I do that I feel compelled to expose everyone to my ~super secret~ character profile stash, complete with illustrations from the Sims 3! Congrats, readers, you're about the fall in that hole again."

...Were my infamous words almost EXACTLY a year ago (Sept 5th, 2012) when I was launching the initial campaign for "DAISUKI." (Remember that book? Oh, so long ago.)  Back then was the very first peek into the profiles and lives of Reina and Aiko, now my most famous characters. As I gear up for the spinoff release JIAI JOUWA later this month, it's time to start over again!

I'm leading off with the main character of the first novel, Jun. You know Jun (probably) from REN'AI RENSAI. She had a prominent role in the NANPAKAI / CHINSEKI duo and appeared a couple of times in KOIBUMI. Oh look she has her own novel now wooo!

HERE COMES MORE THAN YOU EVER WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT HER:

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BASICS:

Name: Junri "Jun" Isoya  (磯谷純理)
Birthday: October 9th, 1975
Zodiac (Western): Libra
Zodiac (Eastern): Rabbit
Nationality: Japanese
Birthplace: Sapporo (Hokkaido)
Height: 5'9
Weight: 120 lbs. 
Voice: Medium
Speech Patterns: Neutral

LIKES/DISLIKES: 

Fave Color: Red
Fave Food:  Italian
Fave Drink: Tea, coffee, caffeine and alcohol in general.
Fave Music: Rock bands from the 1990s.
Clothing Style:  Tailored business suits both at work and at home. Sometimes jeans and a T-shirt or the rogue skirt wind up in there too.
Hobbies: Studying kanji, collecting old texts and woodblock prints, calligraphy, reading poetry (haiku,) going to bars.

Hokkaido kids love their snowboarding and skiing.

CHARACTER:

Family:  Mother (Deceased,) Father (Deceased,) Uncle, Aunt, Cousin
Sexuality: Lesbian
Partner: None
Best Friend: Yuna Miyazaki and Ayami Itou
Occupation(s): General manager for family's hotel empire.
Comes Off As: Friendly, Polite, Professional
Sub/Dom: Switch, with preference for sub.

PARAGRAPHS OF BIOGRAPHY STUFF:

Jun was born into the Isoya hospitality empire, established by her great-great-grandfather. Growing up her father was chairman of the company, affording his immediate family a very comfortable lifestyle. However, when Jun was still in elementary school, her parents died in an airplane crash over the sea, leaving her an orphan and her family's empire on the brink.

Her uncle took over the company and Jun's upbringing. While technically a ward of her uncle, Jun had her own money from inheritance and mostly took care of herself, including cooking and cleaning the condo she also inherited. (She lived by herself from the age of 16, under her uncle's supervision.) This fostered in her an independent lifestyle that carried on into her adult life.

There's something poetic about ice cream in front of recycling bins.

Jun always knew that she wanted to go into the family business. She went to one of the top high schools in Sapporo that focused on leadership abilities and careers. While there she piccked up some less than desirable habits such as drinking and smoking, but the one habit she never thought of as dirty was becoming sexually active. Although she went to a co-ed school, she discovered she only had eyes for her female classmates. She had a few flings with some before graduating and attending the top hospitality school in Hokkaido.

A busy study and interning life forced her to reevaluate her private needs, the core one being her physical desires. Unable to dedicate the time necessary to find lesbian relationships in an underground society, Jun experimented with men and ended up with five casual-to-serious boyfriends throughout her college career. A return to lesbianism occurred when the last one proposed to her, and she realized a man would never make her happy.

After completing her degrees and internships, Jun was officially hired by her family's empire. She quickly rose the ranks until she was made the general manager of a smaller hotel shortly after her thirtieth birthday. However, Jun is not the type to be content with the bare minimum. She sees herself as the true heir to her family's empire and makes it her goal every day to prove that she should be made chairwoman one day. But given her sex and her androgynous style, her uncle feels that the investors of the company would be too put off to allow him to make anything official.

Sometimes you just have to put on a skirt and pose.

As Jun is a busy woman running hotels all day and constantly attending conferences across the continent, she has little time for relationships. Although she doesn't like to admit it, she has never had a real girlfriend. She has friends with benefits, but no one she would ever say she loves. This hurts her deeply as she considers herself a romantic who would like to spend at least part of her life with someone. She doesn't believe she should have to sacrifice any part of her career, though, so finding a woman who is willing to put up with her hours is a constant hindrance.

When she's not pining about love and sex, Jun enjoys solitary hobbies such as collecting and reading. Due to the nature of her family's empire (a Western hotel chain,) her everyday life is very Western, especially for Japanese society. This has led to her becoming interested in traditional Japanese culture, particularly in pre-Meiji eras. She collects old texts, woodblock prints, and studies archaic kanji that no one uses anymore. When she was in high school she achieved a high-ranking calligraphy level, and occasionally indulges when needing to blow off some steam.

When in want of a real sunset, sit beneath a picture of one.

"KATAOMOI." New Character Sneak Peek!

As promised, I've got two new characters to introduce to you that will be making their debut in "KATAOMOI!" Now, the lovely ladies you see in these screenshots  have been styled in the way they would dress today...even thought they're debuting back in 1997! (Mmm grunge.)

Originally only one of these characters were going to be in the story, but then I was, uh, "inspired" to add the other, and I'm glad I did. They were a lot of fun to write, and it's not often I get to write about non-sexual best friends in the Ren'Ai Rensai universe.

But enough about that. You don't care. You just want to meet the new ladies! Now, you don't get TOO much information. Not until the book's been out a couple of days. ;)

Yatsumi Katsuragi

Yatsumi is a no-nonsense woman when it comes to feminism, queer rights, and general activism. She is dedicated to her friends (who are not assholes, by the way) and often indulges their crazy loves and fantasies. Most people don't know this, but she's half-Chinese on her mother's side.

Mio Yoshioka

Mio has a few thousand skeletons in her closet, the biggest one being her previous relationship with Reina - of which she's still only a little bit bitter about. Mio is the type to fill the missing pieces of her life with second-hand replacements. She is best friends with Yatsumi, who is the only one to not make fun of her interests - or her past.

Remember! "KATAOMOI." is coming out TOMORROW, March 29th!

REN'AI RENSAI Character Profile 2: Aiko Takeuchi

After the joy and fun of last week's character profile, I decided to, you know, follow it up with another one, right on schedule! Only two more to go after this one! And then, launch day!

Today's feature is the other main character of the REN'AI RENSAI series, Aiko Takeuchi..She's practically the polar opposite of Reina, so expect! A lot! Of exclamations!

(Note: As the series jumps around a span of 20 or so years, profiles tend to cover everything in that time period.)

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BASICS:

Name: Aiko Takeuchi (竹内愛子)

I really need to learn to take solo screens of my Sims.

Birthday: September 12th, 1973
Zodiac (Western): Virgo
Zodiac (Eastern): Ox
Nationality: Japanese
Height: 5'1
Weight: 95 lbs. 
Voice: Low
Speech Patterns: Feminine

LIKES/DISLIKES: 

Fave Color: Pink
Fave Food: Grilled salmon
Fave Drink: Gin
Fave Music: Popular music from the late 80s//early 90s
Clothing Style (Teens): Skirts and dresses
Clothing Style (Adult):  Jeans with Blouses, Occasional skirt/dress in hotter months.
Hobbies: Cooking/Baking, Shopping, Reading, Watching and critiquing movies with lesbian couples.

Camera's over here, sweetie.

CHARACTER:

Natal Family:  Mother, Father, Two older brothers, Two older sisters
Sexuality: Lesbian
Partner: Reina Yamada
Best Friend: Yuri Furusawa
Occupation(s): Student, Housewife
Comes Off As: Naive, Friendly
Sub/Dom: Sub, with inclination to switch.
 
PARAGRAPHS OF BIOGRAPHY STUFF:

Aiko grew up the youngest child in a sheltering family. Growing up it was impressed upon her that, while it was important for her to study and get a good degree, ultimately getting married to a man and having his children was her expectation.  Thus Aiko harbored multiple dreams as a child of lavish weddings and idealized the symbol of the housewife in Japanese society. Each time she got a new boyfriend her dreams were renewed, but Aiko was quick to find that none of her boyfriends were an adequate match for her.

Always, always a proper lady~

Her studies revolved around the English language and Western culture, leading her to enroll in an all-women's university focusing on international studies after graduating high school. One day she visited her cousin's place of work and met Reina, who flirted with her and made Aiko consider her sexuality for the very first time.

As she began a relationship with Reina, Aiko realized she had to choose between her/society's ideals, and what would make her happiest. In the end she sacrificed her dreams of marriage and children to become a housewife for Reina, aware that nobody would ever take their relationship seriously, assuming they even knew. In the process, Aiko lost a majority of her friends and lost the respect of her family. Even in later years Aiko retains some of her naivete and has a habit of outing herself to the wrong people at the wrong time. Although she's in a controversial kind of relationship, Aiko remains sheltered in how people will truly react to her way of life.

Somebody really should make that bed.

She is an empathetic person, always trying to help those around her. This often leads her to overextending herself and falling deeper when she realizes her unemotional girlfriend won't support her. Over time Aiko begins to become more and more jaded, and although she continues to strive to be optimistic, reality often contradicts her. She goes in and out of lesbian oriented organizations with the intent to help, but is often rejected because of her girlfriend's philandering past. This has lead to Aiko having an isolated life, with the exception of one friend, her neighbor Yuri. She is also one of the only people outside of Aiko's family to know of her sexuality, let alone support her. Although Yuri is married and has a child, she later comes out as gay to Aiko and becomes one of her only lovers outside of her relationship with Reina. Even so, Aiko often wishes she had more friends and family that didn't force themselves to be polite to her.

On one hand Aiko tries to convince herself all her sacrifices in the social world were worth it so she could be with Reina, but on the other, her moments of despair and frustration have increased. Her desire to express her emotions (especially love) often clash with Reina's listlessness and boredom. Sometimes Aiko considers breaking off  their twenty-year-long relationship, but in the end, her love for somebody she's not sure even loves her back is too strong. Aiko convinces herself it doesn't matter, but lives for the day when Reina will reciprocate her feelings, willingly and openly.

Naughty secrets on a slide? Well, I never.

REN'AI RENSAI Character Profile 1: Reina Yamada

There comes a time in every marketing ploy UH I MEAN campaign I do that I feel compelled to expose everyone to my ~super secret~ character profile stash, complete with illustrations from the Sims 3! Congrats, readers, you're about the fall in that hole again.

I plan on doing four of these this month, even though the REN'AI RENSAI series only technically has two characters. Which means I'll post both main characters in a row than a couple random minor characters that appear in "DAISUKI." (and also come straight from the main CROSS// universe, and originally appeared there as well. Ha. Publishing order is weird.)

Today's poor victim put up for public viewing is the not-so-private but also not-so-outgoing (so you know, like most people) Reina Yamada. I decided to launch with her because she's the one I came up with first.

(Note: As the series jumps around a span of 20 or so years, profiles tend to cover everything in that time period.)

HERE WE GO DESU YO~

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BASICS:

Is this seriously the best solo pic I have of her at 40? Srsly.

Name: Reina Yamada (山田麗奈)
Birthday: December 3rd, 1972
Zodiac (Western): Sagittarius
Zodiac (Eastern): Rat  
Nationality: Japanese
Height: 5'6
Weight: 115 lbs. 
Voice: Low
Speech Patterns: Masculine

LIKES/DISLIKES: 

Fave Color: Blue
Fave Food: Okonomiyaki
Fave Drink: Beer (Sapporo Draft)
Fave Music: Female songwriters from the 1980s
Clothing Style (Teens):  Baggy sweaters, jeans or short-shorts/mini-skirts.
Clothing Style (Adult):  Jeans with T-shirt or pullover. (Casual) Women's tailored suits. (Work)
Hobbies: Sex, Going to bars, Watching TV

Just chillin' like a 20yo badass.

CHARACTER:

Natal Family:  Mother, Father (Deceased)
Sexuality: Lesbian
Partner: Aiko Takeuchi
Best Friend: Michiko Kawazama
Occupation(s): Waitress, Singer/Dancer, Student, Corporate Drone (In order through series.)
Comes Off As: Aloof, Charming, Lazy
Sub/Dom: Dom. Always.
 
PARAGRAPHS OF BIOGRAPHY STUFF:

Reina is a mystery to everyone but herself. She lives life with the idea of "do what I want, to an extent", and this confuses just about everyone around her, who continue to live in the Japanese group mentality. While it estranges her from most of the people she meets, her charisma makes up for it and she usually ends up with a few friends for a few hours, wherever she goes.

Growing up Reina was an only child, the daughter of a housewife and a university professor. Her father was killed in a transportation accident when she was 14, throwing her mother into severe depression and the family unit into dire financial straits. Financial problems were compounded when Reina's mother decided to send her to a "prestigious" all girls private high school in northern Tokyo. It was at this school Reina first realized her attraction to other girls while also meeting her best friend Michiko, an American-born girl with a lot of self-confidence to share.

She only has one thing on her mind.

Reina earned a reputation for philandering that would last her entire life. Her relaxed attitude towards life and relationships leads her to becoming the "experiment" for other women looking to try a different kind of sexual relations. While Reina doesn't mind this and even welcomes it at times, she does get tired of seeing the same women turn around and return to the "easier" heterosexual lifestyle. For Reina her sexuality's never been a choice, even when her mother threatened to throw her out for being a stain on her father's legacy. To ease the tension in her house, she got a job right out of high school as the underaged waitress at the only lesbian stripclub in the country. Although she enjoyed her job (the perfect place to pick up lesbians, after all), after a year she saw an ad for theater rehearsals and thought she could make more money doing it. She ended up just becoming an idolized pony show every weekend.

I had another version with epic polygon fail.

However, one of her groupmates had a habit of bringing her family around the theater, and that was how Reina met Aiko. Although Reina never thought it would lead anywhere (other than Aiko running off with an old boyfriend, like women were wont to do) they started "dating" and eventually became girlfriends. Even though Reina had slept with nearly hundreds of women before, Aiko was her first "official" girlfriend. Yet they were still the oddest couple in the gay district, since with becoming girlfriends Reina stipulated she still wanted the freedom to sleep with other women. Aiko agreed, on the condition they "did it together".

Being in a relationship forced Reina to reevaluate her role in life, especially when she was partnered with the "girliest girl" imaginable. Aiko's only real dream was to become a homemaker, and in order to make that happen for her, Reina quit her job at the theater, cut off her hair, and enrolled in university. After graduating she got a job as a desk drone at a corporation. Soon Aiko's great aunt died, leaving Aiko a paid-off house in the Tokyo suburbs. Reina and Aiko moved in together, and became an odd representation of a typical Japanese married couple.

AWESOME BENDER, BRO.

As years passed, Reina adopted a more masculine appearance to go alongside her already masculine speech and mannerisms. Her life began to revolve around work with odd moments of play, and as the economy in Japan weakened more and more, Reina became paranoid about losing her job because of her gender and sexuality. While at home and in the bars she remained the same aloof and lazy Reina everybody knew, at work her paranoia reached a point where it solidified in her brain and she began to develop Gender Identity Disorder. In Japan, everyone is expected to take up a rigid gender role, and if Reina wasn't a "woman", then she had to be a "man". This lead to her becoming strictly dominant in the bedroom, and incapable of acknowledging her old and abandoned feminine side.

Throughout her life Reina has only had a couple people considered close to her and are subsequently the only women she's acknowledged feelings for:  her best friend Michiko, who returned to America when Reina was twenty and visits every so often, and Aiko, who has stuck by Reina's antics for twenty years. Others either see her as too selfish to deal with, or a fun friend for certain times, so long as they're not seen around her outside the gay districts. Reina takes this in stride and even prefers it, being naturally reclusive until her libido sparks up. Her reputation as a womanizer precedes her, and it's rumored she's slept with 300 women. Of course, only she knows the real number. Maybe. She's not the type to keep track or care. Her lack of caring about most things (aside from hiding herself at her job) has made her almost completely incapable over the years of expressing herself or her emotions. Her attitude is to bottle everything up and pretend "feelings" don't exist. But she is human, and does have feelings. Including those annoying ones like "love". Sometimes.

 Well, maybe "free love".

This is my first time noticing those creepy giraffes.

Same Sim time at the same Sim place next Wednesday!

"The only other way to play God is through wri-I mean the Sims."

My best kept secret that isn't a secret at all is that I keep a health dose of Sims 3 (used to be Sims 2, will probably one day be Sims 4) in my life. Recently I've been playing about an hour every day, but I go through spurts like these and eventually I won't be playing it at all for a while. But I digress already!

Anyway, I don't have as much time anymore as I used to to REALLY get into the game and play it - back in the Sims 2 days I had multiple families whose sole purpose was to pop out sim babies so I could challenge myself to take care of them all while watching all their individualisms come out. Then I got the brilliant idea to recreate all my Nagnomei characters in Sim form and try to recreate their settings and situations as well. This ended up being  really useful, because now I had visual references for characters I never really thought about before!

Seriously, do you know how long it took to find this hair again?

When I got Sims 3, the very first thing I did was go the character route, and now it's all I play. The first attraction is that, especially if you can't draw worth crap like me, you finally get to make visual representations of your characters JUST as you want them. Although I have gone "hair hunting" for the perfect hairstyle (and am still vainly searching for better ones, but let's face it, if I haven't found it by now...) and sometimes I look at my clothes and go "no...no she/he would not wear...any of this. The hell." OH aand somewhere between 2010 and 2011, my laptop died and I lost all my old files. I had some salvaged screenshots, like the one to the left here, to work off when trying to rebuild my character sims. STILL BITTER about the month  long search for Reina's fantastically butchy hair, by the way.

Then, once you have them all the way you want them to look, you eject them into the game and gleefully make them reenact your novels (as much as you can, anyway). Mostly it's just them getting similar jobs to what they "really" have and hooking up with their partners. None of my characters (except one) are the kid-carryin' types, so I have little chance to explore those realms of the game. In fact, two years having this game, I have never had a sim-baby. Sims 2 Player in me is crying.

BUT THE BEST PART is when you've ran out of things to force them to do and you just...let them do their own thing. There are lulzy relationships in my game between characters that will never happen in cannon, but I let them do it because it's so personally amusing to me. Then there's having whole new characters enter your world. Sugar Bijou started dating one of my characters, and now she's being written in later on in the series with a different name and my own background info. I love it when the Sims writes my own damn story for me. (I currently have one supporting character sporting a sudden wish to "kiss" one of my main characters, and my brain is already going "Woah!" at this information.)

Actually, I lied. The best part is when you let things just "run" and your characters still act...in character. When you've programed them so well that they react the exact way you would have written them. I can't lie, I get a huge smug writerly satisfaction from it. It validates that I actually do know this character inside-and-out, because I can exactly predict how they will live as a damn Sim.

So before I go on and on about how great this game is for writers, let me ask - do you Sim? Do you recreate your novels to the greatest extent you can? Have you gotten new ideas from it? Dyin' to know.

Weekly Writing Check-In: Wait...oh...oh oops.

What I should've spent my weekend doing.

AHAHAHA @ ME LOL. I didn't write much this week. Kinda taking a weekend break because a friend from Tokyo visited me and we just kinda partied all over the place. And when I did have time to write I decided sleep was more important. How very dare I, I know.

Meanwhile, playing a lot of Sims again. Novel characters are the best in this game. One of them even got a horse this weekend. Ain't that special? That's special.

Meh, let's be real. The reason why I'm not writing as much really is because I'm not as inspired with where I'm at right now. Hence, a little break to recharge the muse. Mostly I just haven't written some good ol' fashion'd  smut in a while. Too much plot, not enough sex. Happens in books, I hear. The answer is to just go ahead and write some unrelated smut, but then I feel bad because I'm not working on what I should be working on. Vicious cycles. Sigh.

But at this rate I may just go ahead and write some smut.

I may or may not let you know how it turns out.

"I'm Hearing Voices" Blogfest Day 2: Dialogue Introduction

It's day two of the Blogfest hosted over at Live to Write...Edit When Necessary and Reading, Writing, and Lovin' It! Today's challenge is:

"Dialogue Introduction: Have two characters introduce each other using only dialogue—no backstory, no internalization, just dialogue between the two. Max 250 words. "

All I'm going to do to introduce this is tell you that I'm using "CROSS//" characters Danielle Cromwell and Miranda Hotler, because if you ask me to write an interaction scene, it has to be them. (Also, warning: they swear like the sailors they could be, but no slurs.)

If I showed you the actual "best screencap ever" of them, I would be spoiling everything.

“It appears that we have company.”

“Good. Maybe they can distract you from me.”

“How rude. I was merely keeping you company.”

“I never asked for your company. Hey, why aren’t you looking at me? What are they saying?”

“Hm? Oh, they were wondering if we could introduce each other.”

“Ha! You go on ahead, I need a drink first.”

“All right. Well, the one quaffing her beer here is Danielle.”

“It’s not even good beer, honestly.”

“She’s a bit stubborn. And insubordinate towards me.”

“Pfft. Like you deserve better.”

“Well, go on. It’s your turn now.”

“Eh? Hm. Well this one who is…smoking. Really? You have to smoke now?”

“It’s a free country, so says we in the military.”

“This one destroying my lungs with second-hand smoke is Miranda. If I’m insubordinate, then she’s insufferable.”

“You left out the part where I’m your commanding officer.”

“No, what I left out is the part where you’re always trying to conduct special ops. missions into the dark recesses of my pussy.”

“Subtle.”

“It’s true though! I’m telling you! Even though she’s my commanding officer, and I’ve already told her no, she still comes on to me like tigers onto meat.”

“Face it, Danielle, you only say no because I’m your commanding officer.”

“Fucking you would be unprofessional. And stop smiling.”

“Stop drinking.”

“Stop smoking!”

“See how she treats her commanding officer?”

“Go fuck yourself!”

“I would love to, but I’m afraid that would be rather, ah…unprofessional.”

“Fucking lesbians.”

“I always try.”

Once again, a perfect 250 words =P

Weekly Writing Check-In: CAAAAAT.

Due to all the traveling (and full days of work) this week, very little writing or editing got done. I think I wrote a total of three lines last night, and that's about it. Mostly caught up on my sleep now, and my regular schedule returns this next week, so I'm hoping to finish up this chapter I'm on now so I can get back to editing.

Some of you (okay, none of you) may remember my lamenting of probably never writing certain characters, in particular a cat named Sadie. Well, after getting The Sims 3 Pets expansion pack for Christmas, I decided that it was time to bring Sadie to life...in a computer game. I loaded her little fur-butt up, and, behold! She lives!

I gave her the attributes of "Genius", "Quiet", and "Friendly". Three pretty safe features for a pet sim, but that's how I start stuff out. I've only played the household for an hour after adding the cat, but I'm already loving all the little interactions that I may have to think more about actually adding her into the series somehow.

And that's my week. First week of 2012 has been completely unproductive. Good thing I don't make resolutions.

Weekly Writing Check-In: Wow, it's been a while since I did one of these!

These gals have the right idea.

And thus here we are, staring down yet another December.

I actually like December. It's finally decently cold sometimes, Christmas!, vacations (I leave for America in less than two weeks! Wee!), and Nano is over so I can stop obsessing over making my daily goals. Which means I totally lose track of my daily goals. Whooooops.

I took the past couple of days off but went back into writing today. Finally finished another scene! As for the editing, it has to be put off another week anyway because this week is my monthly business trip and I can't do any adequate editing on my little laptop. Writing? Okay. Editing? Good luck. And to top it off I'm starting another (reading) book this week so there goes even more time.

Also doesn't "help" (and yet totally does) that I've started playing Sims 3 again. Like any game/computer game, it's something that comes in phases before going away again. And right now I'm in a Sims 3 phase. I'm not even a normal Sims 3 player,  I guess. I don't make random Sims to play with, nope, I have to make all my novel sims. And take lots of screenshots. Some that don't even make sense, or some that are events that haven't happened yet that I use for inspiration and reference later on. It's basically a big, expensive storyboard.

And plus it's fun to see characters that will never hook up just kinda fall all over each other because the game mechanics think that's what supposed to happen.

But writing in general has been slow today. I got a scene that I was dragging with done at dinner tonight. As some of you may recall,  I write all my scenes in order. And I'm really trying to finish this chapter so I can get on to the next one which is SUPER FUN and I am SOOOO looking forward to it, seriously. It's got a couple of scenes I've been hankering to write for years now. And it's coming. Oh god it's coming.

Here, have another screenshot of Japanese Catholic high school girls being utterly ridiculous.

Five minutes later, I discovered custom posing. NICE KNOWIN' U ALL.