Cannonball Read V- Book 1: Personal Demons by James Buchanan

My first exposure to James Buchanan was The Good Thief.  It was one of the first M/Ms I read when I started buying them for my Nook.  In preparation for Cannonball Read V, I picked up a few more of by the same author and was not disappointed.

Personal Demons had a lot of what I enjoy in an m/m romance-thriller; cops, FBI, hot men who aren't out at their jobs; men who meet and fuck and then find out later that they have to work together; no huge fight, but instead personal issues (or, I guess demons, if you will) that make it difficult for the heroes to be together.  That makes it sound so simple, but it wasn't, which I appreciated the most.

Truthfully, what I appreciate the most about James Buchanan's work is the amount of world building (informing?) that goes on.  I have no clue what it's like in LA, but there are enough sense details to let me envision it.  I know little about the world of Voodoo and Santeria, but she did a great job of explaining differences and then, again, giving those details that made me feel that I wasn't a complete moron as I read.

The two main characters, Chase and Enrique, were hot together.  Neither of them were out in their respective jobs, but they weren't ashamed of being gay.  Enrique's - the LA cop - had his life more together than Chase's by far, but he wasn't overly full of himself.  He knew that his religious and sexual orientation could be a problem for the department, but it didn't make him self-loathing.  Chase, the FBI agent and protagonist, had a drinking problem, which he acknowledged, and that was the holding him back from a relationship more than being gay.  Both of them were fully developed characters, with clear external and internal motivations, without ever making me feel like Buchanan was beating me over the head to understand them.

I'm fairly simple when it comes to what I enjoy: hot men and happy endings.  I got both of those in this.

Exploding Box Pix to come

The first one was using a template, the second one was based off the template but my own creation.  I wanted to do one with pockets in it, so that is making it take longer.  I've been snapping shots along the way.  An angle here, a view from there, you know, the usual.  But to complete them I need to wait for some pictures to get printed and my final order of crafty stuff to come in.  I'm excited.

One of the boxes - the first one - is becoming a therapy box.  I need a place to collect my positive memories for therapy, the ones I "installed" - I guess that's the term - for my EMDR.  But it's also a place to keep the memories I'm not done with.  The ones that need more sessions.  I like the idea of doing it in exploding box form so that memories can be contained, bad ones wrapped in good ones, all wrapped inside a reminder that i need to breathe often and listen to my body more.

My laptop is back up and running, so it's off to writing.  The other scrapbooking stuff came in so I can get my collages done for my stories.  Or at least start them.  Jennifer Crusie's collages are inspirational, and I can't wait to start mine.  I envision my collages more as triptychs, but the thought that I'm envisioning them at all is fantastic!

Off to writing.  More pictures to come once I'm further along in my projects.

Exploding Box!

Made my first attempt at an exploding box night before last.  I understood the principle, but I hadn't tried it before.  I used card stock for it, but I'm still not sure that it's "exploding".  The pages aren't falling down.  My guess is that it doesn't fall because it needs more weight.

Practice, practice, practice.

Pictures to come.

Writing

I printed out coloring pages at school today: Circus Tents and Seals.

 It's hard to find good, non-cutesy pictures of seals to cover.  I think I'm going to have to browse some oceanography books or maybe National Geographics.  I need some seal pics.

The circus tents worked better.  I'm going to color some, and probably trace them onto striped scrapbook paper or card stock or something.  In my mind, I have a blue & yellow tent because that was the color of the Cirque du Soleil tent when the younger seesty and I went to see them.  Ultimately, I want stripes more than a specific color combo, so ... to the paper stash!  (Not unlike the Batmobile, I think.)

The full vision is a circus tent with opened curtain doors to let people enter.  Resting in the door I want a ringmaster, a farm boy, and a selkie, so maybe just a hot Irish guy, and a seal next to that?  Hard to say, but that's what I'm envisioning.

In other writing news:  there should be coloring books of drag queens.  They might exist, but I couldn't find any.  Ru paul needs a coloring book, damn it!

Altered Tag 0.2 (Complete!)

Lessons learned from this:  The markers that I own do not write over pastel.  Does this mean Copics are in my future or does this mean Pastel last.  I'll have to research this more.

Finished pictures with details:

Altered Tag 0.2 (Half way through)

Another technique attempt, but only 2/3rds of the way through so far.

This time I distressed the edges of the tag and then crumpled it up.  I upturned three different colors of ink pad onto the tag.  Brown at the bottom; green in the middle; blue at the top.  I stamped out a dragonfly - one of my favorite stamps - and then used pastels on the stamped out piece.  (That probably has a technical name, but I'm too new to know it.)  Also, on another tag that I had screwed up, I stamped out four more of the dragonfly and then glued them underneath the pastel one.  Not the best picture, because you can't see the height, but it is there.

The ribbon is one I bought because I liked the pale green, Spring like quality about it.  Not until I was making this, did I notice how it reminded me of shiny, sparkly grass. That was lucky for my flowery visions.

Finally, I'm going to rummage through my paper stash to find a flower for the left side of the tag.  I may have to draw the stem to get the proper amount of wilt on it.  I'd like the flower to be heavy, slowly waking, not at full mast as it were.

Altered Tag 0.1

I wouldn't even say this is 1.0 on my altered tags.  I made this one to play with a bunch of new stuff I picked up.  This seemed like a great way to practice on a small surface.  I'm really pleased with how it turned out.

Items used:

• Craft Paint (from Michael's or AC Moore)
• Distresser (Tim Holtz)
• Scrap paper (8*8 - called something Latte from Michael's)
• Water based paint pens (Sharpie brand)
• Pastels (from Michael's, nothing fancy, but a good way to start and 50% off at the time)
• Ink pads (again, nothing fancy, AC Moore with a 50% off coupon.)
• Manillas tags (from Staples)
• Glue stick (the craft grade purple kind that turn clear)

In the end, it came out well.  There's a million more things I want to do, but they're going to be on separate tags.  The ultimate goal is to have character tags for my stories in my story book.  I keep all my ideas for various things I'm writing there as I wait for them to form into cohesive work.