Harping On...

I was interviewed in this week's Westchester Business Journal. (Click for link to article). Yay for free publicity! :)

I spend so much time doing shameless promotion for Sonic Legends... every now and then I feel compelled to shamelessly promote one of my many talented friends instead. Right now I want to talk aboutpapavic . He is the only person I have really kept in touch with from the California chapter of my life. I always thought of him as a spiritual brother; I think in a past life we were druids in the same clan in Ireland or something. Being around him was always easy, familiar, and warm, even before I really knew him.

Vic also happens to be one of the most amazing photographers I've ever seen. I am constantly astonished at how he can find the unique and startling beauty in every woman, every landscape and every mundane thing. Do yourself a kindness and go to his website by clicking here.

That is all. :)

Having been inspired by the brilliant temperlj these past few months by her ever-positive "Good News Friday" lists, I have decided that her brilliance must be shared - I hope she'll forgive me for stealing her idea, but it just seems like such a great way to remind oneself of the good things in life, no matter how small. I find that I tend to focus way too much on the struggles, the frustrations, the disappointments... Life will always be full of hardships, and I don't want to become one of those people who forgets the abundance of blessings in her life. I don't want to become a "spoiled American" who lets greed and discontent take over her life, always striving for more and never appreciating what she has (for those of you on Facebook, see the conversations stemming from my latest note). So... here goes:
( Good News Friday List no. 1 )

Ahhh, I feel better already! :)

This year's El Porcho Spookio Halloween party is also Sonic Legends' launch party, so it will be an especially good time. Added to the decoration collection quite a bit this year, and got some great ideas off the internet too. Food will be fun and halloween-themed like last year. This year there will be live music, a costume contest with prizes, and a halloween-themed game of D&D! So psyched. Sadly, the only people from S.L. will be me, Cody and John, an old old old flame of mine (from when I was 15) who does some sound design work for us. Jack is getting married this weekend, so Jack and Mike W. couldn't make it up. And the two composers who live in NY, Matt and Jonn,  can't make it either. Everyone else lives out of state. However, lots of my gamer friends will be there - and non-gamer friends too. The best part is that it is supposed to be fairly warm out tomorrow, so I can do much of the set-up outside and keep the doors open so the party spreads throughout the porch and the inside. This is a big relief because a heckofalotta people are coming and I wasn't sure where I was going to put everyone. Now I can seal off my studio and there will still be plenty of space. Plus, I have some big fun scary decorating plans for the porch this year.... mwahahahaha!

Tonight I must:
1. clean apartment
2. do laundry
3. bake cookies
4. carve pumpkins
5. put all scary S.L. soundscapes on a CD to play on the porch.

Stay tuned for pictures! Wahoooo! :)

... are now up and running at www.sonic-legends.com. Finally! After a year in the making. What a journey it's been!

I am now taking my sick, feverish, overworked body back to bed. :)

Got a call late last week that due to the impending hurricane expected in CT, Sweet Amaryllis would not be performing at CTRF this past weekend. So... surprise weekend off! Woot!

Friday night Cody and I went to our favorite sushi restaurant, Sushi Mike's in Dobbs Ferry. SO FREAKING GOOD. Saturday was incredibly productive. I finished the sound effects for two more soundscapes, created sample snippets of all dozen soundscapes that will be available at Launch, sent descriptions and time durations to the web designer who's building my estore, and uploaded 24 mp3's (including the full soundscapes and the samples). Cody is giving sound effects a shot (I highly suspect he'll be very good at it) which helps me out immensely. Doing sound effects is pretty darn time-consiming -- more so than I anticipated. I think that from here on in, I'm only going to recruit composers who can do their own. Saturday night we played Batman on the PS3 until I couldn't keep my eyes open anymore.

Sunday morning I cleaned the apartment. Now, you may think "Wow. What a loser. She's writing about cleaning her apartment in her journal?" But you're just not seeing the big picture here.... After two weeks of dayjob, nightjob, and weekend job, our apartment was beyond nasty. (Husbands, no matter how good-intentioned, cannot be trusted to keep a clean house for you. I don't believe this is their fault. It's simply not in their wiring.) After what turned out to be a 3-hour cleaning extravaganza, I woke the hubby and we ventured out to Warwick for Applefest. We stopped first to visit with ladyjoust and barleymash and stayed entirely too long because they are just so lovely to hang out with, and then walked down the Hill of Doom to get shoved around by applefest-crazed crowds. We found one yule gift, ate some rather disgusting greasy food, and after perhaps an hour headed back up the Hill of Doom towards our car, with the intention to stop at Masker's Farm for apples and apple cider doughnuts. But alas, by the time we got up to the car it was already 5:00 and they were closed. So we said good-bye to our dear friends (who graciously let us park at their house - parking in Warwick during Applefest would have been an adventure unto itself!), and we drove around for about an hour looking at houses. Took down some realtor's info. Maybe we'll get a closer look at some of them soon. Just for the helluvit. :)

Got home and made chicken parm and brussells sprouts with garlic, olive oil, parmesan cheese and slivered almonds for dinner. Did a load of laundry. Tried to reinstall EQ2 to see if that would solve the crashing problem. It didn't. So I went to bed and read for a while until I fell asleep. Now I remember what a weekend is supposed to be like!

Now off to the dayjob again. ::sigh::

Hope everyone had a great weekend!

I'm getting ready for work, and I'm thinking "but I JUST went to bed." I'm so tired I could cry. And it's only the beginning...

The faire was absolutely perfect on opening day. Perfect weather, perfect audiences, great fun and great to reconnect with old friends. Sunday was wet and rainy and gray and difficult. But we got through it, and Melissa is already a champ. It's like she's been with us for years instead of only two months. People are amazed when we tell them she's a new member. It's pretty cool.

I simply can't think about working at the office every day this week, running Sonic Legends business at night, and then doing this all again next weekend. I need to just keep putting one foot in front of the other, and keep focusing on the next five minutes. That's the only way I'm going to make it through this month.

Hope everyone had a great weekend!

Okay, so after that minor drawback I picked myself up, dusted myself off and kept going. Keeping it positive, I talked to my contact at Crafty Games and we came up with a press release that will be published on both our websites as soon as their Publisher signs the contract and sends it back to me, which will hopefully be next week.

On to Publisher #2!! This one is sort of one of the biggies. No, not Wizards of the Coast or White Wolf... but not far behind them on the ladder either. Was on the phone for about an hour with the Publisher last night talking Terms. Additionally, he might even commission me to do some theme songs as a Work for Hire. It's pretty exciting stuff! I expect to hear back from him on Monday. And yes, this time I'm asking for an EXCLUSIVE license. Live and learn. ;)

If these deals keep happening, I might not even have the OPTION of keeping my dayjob! As it is, these two deals alone plus Sweet Amaryllis could keep me busy for the next six months. The question is, will they generate enough income to live on? That remains to be seen, but I'll certainly know by the spring...

It's amazing how much it turns out that even with the flight nightmare, going to Gen Con was the best thing I've done for the business so far! Never again will I doubt the importance of networking.

Other than that, I'm very VERY excited about Faire starting this weekend. K is spending the night tonight, and M will meet us at my place in the morning and we'll drive up to site bright and early. I know the economy has been hard on the faire and thus there will be some unpopular changes this year. But I'm happily staying out of any and all drama this has generated among the CTRF community. If there's one thing I learned from my experience at NYRF, it's this rule of thumb: show up, do your job, have fun and stay positive, and go home. Don't get personally involved with management in any way other than a friendly, professional relationship within the fair itself. Don't buy into the "Faire Family" crap and have unrealistic expectations about loyalty. Like most theatre people, they are your friends until they aren't anymore. Simple as that. If I have a "faire family", it's my amazing sisters in Sweet Amaryllis, who play music with me, work their butts off with me, trust me implicitly and stand by me through thick and thin. I LOVE MY BAND!!! And that's enough for me. :) Anyway, I'm SO jazzed about performing with them this weekend! Can't wait to try out our fabulous new material on an audience!

Of course, talk to me next week when I'm so tired all I can do is chug coffee and grunt, and I may be singing a different tune. A month of 7-day workweeks PLUS working evenings on S.L. just might kill me. I guess we'll see...

Hi friendslist,

I would be really really really grateful if you would do one or both of the following:

1) sign up for the Sonic Legends newsletter: Fill out this form -- I promise not to bombard your email box with spam. Seriously, we might send out one newsletter a month, if that. And you'll get fun news, calendar events, freebies... and my eternal gratitude. You have nothing to lose!

2) sign up for the Sonic Legends forums and post something. Anything. An opinion, a general good wish, a suggestion, feedback about the website, a funny limerick or haiku... anything at all. Sign up here.

Thank you!!!

EL

Contract's signed, and it's official. Sonic Legends will be doing the soundscapes for Crafty Games' Fantasy Craft and Spycraft adventures! First batch coming up in November. Yipes! Check out our new partner: www.crafty-games.com

What an exciting adventure this is turning out to be! Very glad I went to Gen Con, because that's where I met these folks. I remember that moment when I missed my flight and the airline wouldn't reimburse me and I had to make a decision whether I was going to go ahead and pay for a new ticket even though we really couldn't afford it, or just forget the whole thing. I was teetering between the two, and a little voice inside my head told me I absolutely had to go. Boy, am I glad I listened... and I'm really glad I have such a supportive husband.

Must get back to work. Am diving right in and working on one of the Fantasy Craft soundscapes right now! :)

I now have a deadline of 12 new soundscapes by the end of the year. Six of them by November.

My trio is booked at CTRF for four weekends between now and then.

I have a full-time dayjob that I don't get home from until 7:30 IF I catch the early train.

I have about three billion things to do to prepare for the Sonic Legends launch before October 24th, including planning the launch party, not to mention all the publicity stuff that I haven't even started on yet (at least I'm getting some help from the hubby with PR), plus doing sound effects and final mixes for several of the soundscapes I'm launching with. Only about a third of all the pre-launch tasks can I do from my office at the dayjob.

And worst of all, the Sonic-Legends website is STILL not ready, and all my attempts to fix the problems have failed. Miserably.  I can't afford to hire a professional and now I don't know what to do! Anybody know any Dreamweaver wizards who would help a small start-up business out of the goodness of his/her heart?

Yeah. So I know I did this to myself by over-filling my plate yet again. But I think I'm going to have a nervous breakdown anyway.

Stolen from ladyjoust  and tomincloset . In the comments of this post, tell me who you would cast to play me in the movie of your life. Then, re-post this in your journal and I shall do the same for you!

That's my tidbit of wisdom I offer you today. You know. So you don't have to go through it to find out for yourself. Just trust me on this one. Hives suck. And it's very disconcerting when you don't know the reason for them. Aside from my invisible flesh-eating zombie theory, of course. Also, when you're given a bottle of pills with the promise of side effects which include "insomnia and euphoria," and you only get the insomnia bit... yeah, that sucks too. Life really isn't fair.

The good news is I may have found another composer for Sonic Legends. She's got a gorgeous voice and she plays violin to boot! She's going to record vocals for me for the Vampire Castle soundscape, which I'm just thrilled about. Thanks again, madbard , for turning me on to her! Her composing style is new age/electronica, which marinshellstone  also does beautifully, but I figure I'd like to have at least two composers who can write in a given style in case one is busy or doesn't feel inspired by the theme, or whatever. She's releasing a new CD very soon... check out her website at http://jenniferlindsay.net/. Now I really need to find people who can do rock, pop, jazz, industrial and hip hop. Once we launch and get things underway, I think I'll start putting ads out. Meantime, if anyone knows of anyone who writes music in the above styles, especially if he/she enjoys the occasional game of D&D or Cthulu or Vampire or whatnot, and wants to bring in some extra cash, let me know. Sonic Legends composers get 70% of the fee (minus tax) every time their soundscape is downloaded (paid quarterly), which is a pretty darn good deal, especially considering all the publicity I'm doing for this - I do expect to get a lot of traffic. The only catch is that the soundscape MUST be exclusively available on Sonic Legends only. No exceptions. However, these soundscapes WILL sell like hotcakes, so Sonic Legends composers will definitely make money. The gaming community is chomping at the bit for them! So yeah... spread the word!

I'm going up to Albany to pick up my rental harp on Saturday. Very psyched about that. The harp, anyway, not necessarily the drive to Albany. I hope it's a nice day... road trips are so much better when the sun is out. Well... we'll see.

Now I need to shift my focus a bit onto Sweet Amaryllis. We're auditioning 3 cellists and 1 violist on Sunday. Wish me luck! Faire starts in a little over a month... Eep!

Okay, off to suffer some more and try to get myself dressed without anything touching my skin. Yeah. Wish me luck on that too. ::sigh::

Sincerely, John Hughes

Here it is! I think it looks great. I can always revise it in photoshop myself later if I want, but I think I'm going to stick with this for now...

Hi Flist,

Please look at these logo concepts and tell me which, if any, you like. And why you like it. And what could be changed to make it better. I can choose one and have them make revisions to it if I want. I'm sort of partial to Concept #4 myself...

I spent last night creating a Forums page on sonic-legends.com. You can now go there and create a user name and start discussing the coolness of Sonic Legends! Just click here.

Snagged from Madbard. Someone created a concerto around the famous Youtube piano-playing cat's performance. It's astonishingly brilliant.

1. Sonic Legends will be officially launching on October 24, 2009. To celebrate, and in honor of the holiday, for one week only (from the launch until October 31, 2009) one spooky soundscape will be available for free!

2. We now are on Facebook (I have no idea how to share the direct url. But if you do a search for Sonic Legends you can find us). Please be our "fan"!

3. We are also now on Twitter: http://twitter.com/SonicLegends.

4. I'm also going to start a separate Sonic Legends blog. Not sure which service I'll use for that yet though... must talk to my web designer to see what's easiest to skin with my design, so I can keep it all uniform...

5. Going to work on (and hopefully finish) "Desert Battle" right now!

My day lillies have exploded into giant yellow suns. The morning glories have created a natural fence around the vegetable garden and are showing their pretty white faces. The tomato plants have turned into tomato TREES, and when I say we will have hundreds of tomatoes, I'm not even exaggerating. I'm thinking in terms of big vats of gazpacho for the El Porcho Magnifico party this year. And lots of tomato sauce for the freezer...

Anyway, this is a photo I took this morning. I love how the sunlight is showering the plants... Behold the glory: