I am so happy! I Ching Jukebox, third edit, is now just great. That means that sometime this evening I’m going approve this version for widespread publication and it will shortly be available through Amazon.com, .ca, .co.uk among others. The ISBN # is 978-0-557-01382-1. If you wish to purchase a downloadable version, go to www.lulu.com/mrssauga .
Yay!
So here’s what I am up to creatively:
I was busy finishing my course “Computers and Human Interraction”. I got an
A, and I can’t afford to sign up for another at the moment so a breather to go work on old and new stuff. My first priority is to edit my two novels and get them published!
I have been doing some filmwork and you can see clips from one event I filmed on http://www.youtube.com/talerockerdreamcat. I screwed up the titles though (put May instead of July) so I’ll eventually have to fix that but considering I’m not getting paid for it, well….It did inspire me to continue with putting stuff up on YouTube and a while ago I had started putting together my song “Pepperoni and Pickles” with images on Windows Movie Maker for posting to my own YouTube account and I do think I’ll finish that. I’ll post the link once it is up.
Two of my favorite short story contests are the Toronto Star Short Story contest (I was a Judge’s Choice winner in that one year) and the CBC Radio Short Story competition. Both of these will opening fairly soon so I’d love to have some new material to submit. It’s been a couple of years since I sent anything in to either of them so now’s the time I think.
And of course, if I haven’t signed up for another course in the next month or so, there is always Nanowrimo…..
I dream of horses standing eyes blinkered
Standing on platforms and looking bewildered
I don’t know what it means
I know how it feels
I do
I am standing on precarious platforms
Blinded for finding the answers
The drivers are missing
Who would have thought
My answers would turn into problems
Not of my doing
I’m not a little bit scared
I don’t want to look
At what just might happen
If those who took my helping hand
Don’t realize soon
They are dragging us with them
Down a very dry well
We don’t deserve it
Doesn’t the universe
Reward those who help others?
I don’t want to be angry
But I am
I don’t want to worry my love
But I do
Cause it’s so hard to find the solutions
To problems that shouldn’t be mine
The horse is biting at the bit
To race beyond the gate
If only I could take these
Blinkers off
Step off the platform
And run free.
(c) Catherine M. Harris, June 16, 2008
Tell me softly what you mean
I don’t know I heard you
Through all the words spoken
The ones unspoken thundered
It isn’t right to be remembering
Stuff I’d long thought buried
Underground.
There’s times (at my age)
Looking back I can’t believe
I can’t see my long ago friend smile anymore
Or hear his voice -
I can’t believe that those rocking chair hours
Are over and
Baby drinks vodka
Though I’m not supposed to know it.
I can’t believe I’m not
That beautiful girl who was too
What? Shy? Insecure? To realise
How goddamn good I had it
I laugh now thinking back
I realize the missed chances
And wonder do they wonder
Or am I just fanciful
Stupid, doesn’t matter
I’m not that anymore
That was just what
Could have been.
I think of things that
Let me down, so so many
And when I thought oh I can do this
Wait no I can’t I can’t I can’t
And do you ever wish
You’d done something differently
Not done something?
Do you ever dream of
All that should have been?
Ah hell, who knows
The cliche is at my time
I need a red sports car
I’m not old enough for the
Purple hat and thanks for that
I feel like I did when I was 17
The world was just too large
I couldn’t decide there were
Constraints and experts
Quick to tell me all I couldn’t do
I just wish that someone would say
Oh yes you can
And you can
I believe in you.
I’m tired of tears
And goodbyes and just fading away
And trying to forget while
Trying to remember
I’m just tired.
So make me laugh
There’s more than enough to
Make me cry
Make me sing
Make me look forward to everything
Cause damn, there’s so much more
I need to remember
All that can be,
There’s so much more to come.
(c) Catherine M. Harris 13/5/2008
My long time blog is actually http://cathi_harris.bravejournal.com . I am on Facebook, and Livejournal, and I hadn’t considered yet another blog thing until I learned about Comicpress. Now you see this is where it gets complicated.
Jim, my very significant other and I started a business officially last month. I do video work as well as web work and for Jim, audio stuff, has voiceover training, also does web stuff and we’re both fiction writers. Jim, whose last name is Wellington, has many years experience in radio at WPKN in Bridgeport CT and since moving to Canada has quite frankly missed radio. He is now a tv production assistant part time but that isn’t radio. A new local radio station started up here last year but before that they needed some volunteer help on the web stuff and we helped them by showing them how to do Dreamweaver.
I remember that evening, I should have been studying for a Finite Mathematics exam but instead I was explaining what Dreamweaver does all the while Jim discussing the differences between PCs and Macs and recounting his very fascinating history of his years with WKPN. At the time he’d hoped that maybe he’d have an opportunity for a job there when it went live. It did go live, he applied, heard nothing, and the last time he ran into the guy running the station he acted as though he had no clue who Jim was. Oh well, he’s better off working doing the tv stuff he is now I guess.
This blog isn’t about Jim though. It’s all about me. The creative me. I likes.
Getting back to our business. We started Talerocker~Dreamcat Creations because we do a lot of freebie web and writing and video and other creative-type stuff for people and times are such we really want to start getting paid for it. We love our friends and acquaintances, really we do, but they aren’t paying our bills. I even have people in my life who are costing me money. Sigh.
Well now, with Talerocker~Dreamcat Creations we have a legitimate licensed business to do our stuff and sell it too. Being broke – and cheap – we’re doing as much as we can Open Source and yay, WordPress and MySQL are that. I recently discovered Comicpress and whee! The bells went off for me. A long ago art I enjoyed suddenly woke up.
Back in the ’80s I took an Animation course at Algonquin College. That was cool. Then, in mid-90s the Toronto Star had a contest for new cartoons. Very cool. I started a strip called Amazing Grace for that contest. I didn’t win and so sadly, Grace didn’t get much more amazing than she was for the contest. But she’s haunted me and I think that I’m at least going to put up the strips I did do here for the world to see.
Life has conspired a lot to change my world in radical ways and who I was in the mid-90s is almost nothing like who I am now. For instance, there was no Jim, and I was a mom to toddler daughter who was subsequently joined by a baby brother, and not long after that dad and mom went their separate ways and that’s when Jim came on the scene. It’s also around the time I started taking a Computer Science degree at Athabasca University, and I have also gotten into doing silly things like Nanowrimo creating some not so silly books, and have also self-published a poetry book on Cafe Press at my store http://www.cafepress.com/cathisplace.
Those links I put here just reminded me of something. I recently joined a community that has personal blogs based on a particular subject and they came back and told me I had violated policy by posting links. If that happens here, I’ll have to strangle something. I can’t strangle my mouse though, it’s cordless.
In honour of that sentiment if in your comments to my posts you put a link here, feel free, but if it goes to some place creepy and nasty we can’t have that (that’s my job). I’ll send your post orbiting off into the great void.
Anyway, so here we are. Two unpublished novels later (one in mid edit for publishing on LuLu I’m thinking), one unpublished comic strip, one thought of another comic strip – this one more of a diary in the life of a mom with a child with an Autistic Spectrum Disorder (my son has Asperger’s), and this site definitely shows a strong possibility of fulfilling possibilities.
My website is http://www.cathisplace.ca – I have a lot of my writing up there if anyone is interested is taking a peek.
And’s that’s it for now while I go try to figure out the link between Comicpress, MySQL on my computer, and the MySQL capabilities of my hosting people (Black Sun in case any one is interested, it’s Canadian).
Oh yes, I’m Canadian. And so is Jim now. 
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