Monday's miscellany: Anyone else like urban fantasy?

Okay, so a while back I warned I might start hitting more of the "randomness" part of my blog subtitle ("art, cats and randomness") more frequently. This post falls under that category.

I've always been a voracious reader. You'd think, what with my pursuing a Ph.D. in English, that my reading tastes would turn to the uber-literary, right? Nope. While I can certainly appreciate some of the literary classics (I'm a big fan of Dostoevsky, for instance), most of the time I'd rather be curled up with a good fantasy novel. For the last ten months, my particular focus has been urban fantasy, especially anything with werewolves, vampires, and/or plenty of irony (for the fellow ironically minded, I suggest The Good Fairies of New York by Martin Millar, by the way). Patricia Briggs and Kim Harrison are currently my fave authors in this genre.

Anyway, earlier this summer I got the itch to write my own urban fantasy novel. So I did.

I say this like it was that matter of fact. Don't worry, it's an act. I paced, sweated, told myself I was being totally foolish to be writing about vampires when I had a perfectly serious dissertation I was being paid (albeit very poorly) to work on. I also ranted at myself about how unlikely it would be that I'd write anything publishable, find an agent, find readers, yadda yadda yadda. In other words, picture the stereotype of the neurotic writer, add curly hair, an ignored dissertation, a love of cats, a patient husband, and you'd come up with me. But last week, all mental self-inflicted torture aside, I managed to finish the final words of my first draft.

Whoo-hoo!

I danced an absurd jig of joy--you know, the one where you're glad it's only your cats watching your rhythm-less hopping and swinging-of-arms? Yeah, that one. Then my writing-instructor self jumped in to remind me that revision is often 9/10ths of writing, and my rhythm-less state faltered even further. (No, I've never been good at letting myself celebrate, in case you were wondering--fits in with that whole neurotic thing.)

Anyway, now I'm alternating my time between coding transcripts for my dissertation, doing PurrPrints things, and looking over my manuscript. I'm also combing through my friends to see if any of them also read urban fantasy--but so far, I haven't found a one. They either stick with the literary stuff, or they don't tend to read fiction at all. Some of them are still being extremely kind enough to read through it and give me feedback anyway--but I'm still hoping to find at least one fellow urban-fantasy reader to give me feedback.

Hence the question in my title--do any of you happen to be big-time urban-fantasy fanatics like me? And, if so, do you perhaps feel like reading a not-yet-published book in that genre and giving me some honest feedback about it? Unfortunately I can't offer any reward beyond a great big thank you (both immediately and, should it get published, in the acknowledgements page), so I completely understand if there are no takers. But I thought it wouldn't hurt to ask, right?

Alright, this excessively long off-topic rant is now officially over :)

(p.s. - in a search on allposters.com for interesting vampire posters, the above image came up--you can find it here if you want to know more about it. It seemed suited to my topic and mood, so I thought I'd share)

A few Holiday dreams: Jewelry, part 1

I've been spending too much time lately drooling (note: this is bad for the keyboard, so don't look at pretty things you want if, say, you just got a new ergonomic keyboard to keep your wrists happy and your hubby might be particularly upset to find evidence of droll on it) over pretty things on etsy that would be so lovely to get for the holidays. Since I know I can't get all of them, I thought I'd just pretend I was filthy rich and could get anything I wanted and thus was showing them off as items already in my home--except instead I'm not at all, and I'd never let you into my messy home because it would take hours to clean it first, so I'm showing them off on my blog.

I know, I'm demented and strange, but in a (usually) harmless way. (Unless you ask some of my students. They might disagree that it's harmless. So I suggest not asking them; it's easier that way.)

Anyway, doing one entry on my drool-fest would be waaaay too long, so I'm going to break it into sections. This first section in my little fantasy-world series is on jewelry.

One of my fave jewelry-makers right now is the awesome steampunk stuff at CatherinetteRings (except they make more than rings, and neither of them are named Catherinette. I'm hoping this means they might be as demented-and-strange as I am, and might suddenly suffer such a strong demented-and-strange episode as to feel the overwhelming need to give me lots of beautiful jewelery. Unlikely? Of course--but hey, "likely" just gets so boring, ya know?).

All these pics are of CatherinetteRings's incredible stuff. Did I mention it was incredible? And that I love it? Oh, and, um, that it's incredible?

Yeah, I guess I covered that...

Anyway (wait, I already did that once this entry. Okay, definite sign it's time to wrap this sucker up), here's to hoping my hubby gets my heavy-handed hinting and buys me one of these beautiful pieces for the holidays this year! Especially one with moonstone or amber in it--hint, hint, and again with the hinting!

By the way, if you happen to rich, generous, and/or just demented-and-strange enough to want to buy me pretty things, you can see my full list of etsy faves here.