Ha! Boom Baby!

My blogsite has a BRAND new look!

Well, sorta, I mean... it’s a blog, how much different could it get?

Anyway, a couple things - you can access it from my website (Shepsus.com/blog) and the blogspot address has been changed to shepsus.blogspot.com, not the long justathought-shepsus.blogspot.com so if you have me bookmarked, you should update it.

The next phase in my plan is to redo my current website as well. It has been said that the pictures on the "About Me" page are older photos of me and don't currently reflect how I look. Since I have a friend who does professional photography DC Creations, I might hire her to do a photo shoot soon.

This past Saturday I went to a writer’s workshop, I took a lot of notes and left knowing a lot more than I did walking in in about the publishing industry. It is something I am really into. The class was about eight people, and the instructor Yishun, who is a professional author, works at a Literary Magazine and teaches at the University of New Hampshire. The homework prior to taking the test was writing a 300-word synopsis/pitch for your story. It was a bit nerve wracking to read aloud what you feel your novel is, and describe your world and characters. I was the only one who did humor, and the instructor definitely gave me pointers on how to convey that to future agents or Presses.

The other thing the class gave me was writing acquaintances. I got to talk to six of the eight other people in there, and went to lunch with two of them. It was a lot of fun. And similar to my experience to karaoke, it was people in just different walks of life who could sit and eat lunch, age, generation, or thoughts on life didn’t matter. Tony is a father of five who hails from Australia, Jenn is a married woman from Flagstaff. It was nice to just talk about ideas and brainstorm with people who think about stories the way you do. Crazy ideas on super hypothetical “What Ifs.” We are just nerds who found other nerds to nerd about something. I like having these people in my life.

My new job is a lot of fun. I have co-workers I get along with and a good set of skills that help here. I am enjoying it. There are other perks too, like some free food, meeting important people, and a rather relaxed environment.

I want to leave work now, so I am cutting this off here… Sorry for the abrupt ending, but yeah, I want to leave.

WAIT – I got a lot of positive response from the Starbucks observation writing, so I am going to try and do that in the near future. So stick around!!!!!

Shep