Month: October 2010

Our Sacred Balance (eBook)

On By Michel McDonaldIn Books, eBook, Gay, Kindle, NookLeave a comment

I am sad to say that I finished reading Our Sacred Balance. I’m sad because it is the final book in the Triquetra Trilogy. I guess all good things have to come to an end, this being my first gay e-book series I was hoping it would last longer. It did take me 3 months to read since I read 1 book each month so that’s something I suppose.

I wouldn’t want to give anything away but here is the synopsis according to the Rainbow eBooks website:

“Lovers Kristair and Jacob believe they’re done with the supernatural and on the road to a new life. But the supernatural isn’t done with them. A stalker is targeting vampires, tearing them from their sanctuaries and leaving them to burn in the sun, and when the vampires of Pittsburgh call upon the ancient Kristair, he cannot refuse them aid despite Jacob’s objections.

While their quest becomes more dangerous, tempers flare when Jacob tries to make Kristair understand the limitations of being human again. As they struggle to reach a balance between them, the other vampires become restless, eager to find the person responsible for the deaths of their own so they can vent their rage.

But the enemy is closer than they ever imagined and carries a personal grudge against them. Their mental link gone and spiritual strength halved, Jacob and Kristair must conquer Kristair’s newfound helplessness and learn to communicate with each other before their enemy destroys everything they’ve fought so hard to win.”

There is so much more to the story that I don’t want to give away but let me just say that it is very dramatic and interesting. That’s what I love about books, they have so many twists and turns and you never know what’s going to happen next. And this one had some twists that you will not expect.

Marguerite Labbe is my favorite author of gay ebooks forever. Not just because her books were the first gay books that I read but also because she really knows how to excite a person with her writing and I’m not just talking about the drama in the book.

If you like gay vampire novels then this trilogy is for you. Start with My Heart is Within You over at the Rainbow eBooks website. I looked and it’s not available in the Nook store. If you have a Kindle you can get it in Kindle format from the Kindle store. Amazon also has it in paperback format so if you don’t have an e-book reader then you can still buy it.

Nurse Discovers Patient Is Her Long-Lost Father

On By Michel McDonaldIn Amplify, Daily Blog, NewsLeave a comment

This is such a happy and sad story. I didn’t include all of the text so you’ll have to click the AOL News link below. This story has touched me only because I don’t know my father either. It took her all these years to find her father and he has cancer and their reunion may be cut short but at least they were able to meet each other before his fateful day comes.

I am so happy for the two of them and wish the best for their families.

Amplify’d from www.aolnews.com

Nurse Discovers Patient Is Her Long-Lost Father

(Sept. 3) — What are the odds?

Wanda Rodriguez, a 41-year-old assistant head nurse at New York’s Calvary Hospital, had not seen her father since she was a baby.

Raised by her mother in the Bronx after her parents broke up when she was less than a year old, Rodriguez didn’t know much more of her father than his name, Victor Peraza, and hermother’s recollection that Rodriguez looked a lot like him.

But as fate would have it, on Aug. 25 a new cancer patient was admitted to Calvary, a hospital that administers care to the terminally ill. When Rodriguez learned his name while discussing his case with a colleague, she froze up.

“I thought, if he’s my complexion, if he has green eyes, he could be my dad,” Rodriguez told ABC News. Read more at www.aolnews.com

See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/cskp

Real Housewives of Beverly Hills

On By Michel McDonaldIn Celebrities, TVLeave a comment

I wasn’t going to watch the new Housewives show because I think there is a bit of a housewife overload. But… when I found out that one of the housewives is Kim Richards who was a face that was all over the place in the mid 80′s, I figured I would give it a go.

I didn’t know that she is related to the Hilton’s either. Seeing her was a huge surprise, a good surprise.

Housewives rundown:

  • Orange County – Eh, I like one or two of them but the others I don’t care for.
  • Atlanta – I never really watched
  • New York – I liked New York
  • New Jersey – I LOVED New Jersey
  • Washington D.C. – I never really watched
  • Beverly Hills – I think I will like

I hate getting sucked into yet another housewives show but luckily they repeat so if I miss an episode because of my Thursday night shows then I can watch it when it repeats.

Darrin says that the houses in this new series puts all the houses in the previous shows to shame. He said that all the other housewives look poor compared to Beverly Hills.

Writing My Book Isn’t Easy

On By Michel McDonaldIn Books, eBook, Friends and FamilyLeave a comment

I’ve mentioned in here before that I’m writing a book based on my childhood. It’s about the abuse that I took from being beaten with a fire log to being punched in the face at age 13. Also being homeless at 15 and 17.

Edit: It’s not just a few abuse stories but the abuse I took throughout my childhood.

Thinking about these 6 kids who committed suicide has really gotten me to think differently about my book because I too tried to commit suicide, not just because of the school bullies but also because of my parents who bullied me more than the kids at school.

I don’t want to compare what happened to me to what happened to them because I really don’t know what happened to them. Everyone’s story is like a finger print or a snow flake, no two are alike.

The problem that I’m facing though is, I’m not a writer. Yes I write blog posts from time to time but this is different.

I sent my life partner a chapter to read and after only reading 1 paragraph he told me that my sentence structure needs work. I reminded him that I am not a writer and I don’t know what the hell I’m doing lol. Then he said it was too long, I need to shorten some of the stories. It’s a book! I can’t shorten the stories because the only way to understand what happened is to read the long ass stories.

A friend of mine offered to edit it because she loves to read. She didn’t say anything about what was wrong with the chapter, in fact she just said it was good. She doesn’t edit books for a living but I trust her judgement because she loves to read.

I can’t afford to pay someone to edit my book, I can’t even pay a ghost writer to write it for me, all I can do is write and edit it the way I have been and hope that it is readable.

I’m not writing it to make big bucks, I’m writing it to get it all off my chest. I have family members who were cut out of my life until I was 27 years old when I finally met them who would like to know what happened during my childhood that they were not allowed to witness.

It will take some time for me to write because I really have to be in the mood and I haven’t been feeling much in the mood lately. Thinking about those kids who killed themselves has really put things in perspective for me and I start to think, do I really need to write this book? Was my life that bad? I mean, there are people who got it worse than I did, some so bad they actually killed themselves.

My abuse stories weren’t even that bad, I mean being punched in the face is nothing compared to one guy who said that he was cinderella, forced to do all the housework, beaten and left to starve in a dungeon like basement. I was treated like a prince compared to that guy.

Well, as I said, I’m not writing it to make money, more to give my friends and family to read. It will probably be offered for $1 on Barnes and Noble once I finish it. I have to set a price and as far as I know Pubit doesn’t let you give your book away.

Ok, I’m done venting lol.

Perez Hilton Pledges to Be Kind on the Ellen Show

On By Michel McDonaldIn CelebritiesLeave a comment

We were watching the Ellen show today and Perez Hilton was on there talking about how he is changing his ways. He talks about how he has been going out there speaking about the recent gay suicides and people were calling him out because he was one of the biggest internet bullies which makes him a hypocrite.

He talked about how he doesn’t want people in his own [gay] community being ashamed of him and I myself have been one of those who have been ashamed. Have you seen his website? He put semen and penis’ on people’s faces. Nobody deserves to have someone do that to them on a daily basis.

He also talked about outing people and I am glad he talked about that. It’s none of anyones business who is gay and who isn’t. I for one am always saying who I think might be gay or who I wish would just come out of the closet already but really, it’s none of my business either. Although my reasons for saying it aren’t malicious, it’s out of lust lol.

I have recognized myself that I might have said a few things here and there about people and I knew it was unfair and have either deleted the posts or have added a retraction saying it was wrong so I at least recognize my own internet bullying. I have owned up to it and apologized and now Perez has finally decided to do the same.

I’m glad that he has finally recognized what a selfish bully he became and is going to start doing things differently although it will remain to be seen if he actually does make those changes or not. I like Perez so I’m hoping he stays true to his word. He mentioned in the interview that he was 26 when he started and he’s 31 now. It’s time to start acting 31.

Unfortunately, The Ellen Show doesn’t allow embedding their YouTube video’s so you’ll just have to click below for the video.

Perez Hilton Pledges to Be Kind on The Ellen Show – via YouTube

My Bike Wheel

On By Michel McDonaldIn Cycling, ExerciseLeave a comment

It has been over a month since my back wheel decided it didn’t want me to ride my bike anymore. I was riding the store and all of a sudden it started getting wobbly but I dismissed it. By the time I left the store I had noticed that it was getting really bad so I got off the bike and saw the problem. The long screw holding the wheel onto the frame had unscrewed to the left. I don’t know why but it did and everything on the right side fell out. All the nuts are gone and the ball bearings, everything is missing.

Chips cousins girlfriend told me that her tenant fixes bikes but I didn’t know him and I would rather just go to the bike shop. Well, we never made time to go and my bike has been sitting in the patio all this time while I’ve had to walk to the store every day.

So yesterday I was walking by her house and went to the door and was talking to her and we decided to ask him about fixing the wheel and I brought the wheel to him and told him I would bring him the money to fix it. He said without looking at it that it might only cost $2-4 to fix it and I told him if it’s that cheap I will give you $20.

I brought him $20 this morning and he said whoa wait, don’t pay me until after I fixed it. Well, I didn’t want him to have to pay for the parts then I end up running out of money and not be able to pay him until November and I wanted my bike back sooner than later.

He took me to where my wheel was sitting and showed me something. I didn’t have my camera with me so I couldn’t take a picture but there is an internal problem. When I was riding the bike, or maybe when I had to walk it home, that long screw had started scraping on the inside of the wheel. So now there is a huge dent from that which will probably prevent him from being able to fix it at all.

He told me that if he can fix all that then he will but he doesn’t even know if he can so he gave me the $20 back and said if I can’t fix it you’re gonna have to go buy a new wheel.

If he can’t fix the wheel then that’s fine, I’ll just get it back from him because I don’t want to have to buy a new tire again, Darrin bought me the tire that is on that wheel and it matches my front tire lol.

I’m not in that much of a hurry to get it back BUT I would like to ride my bike to the store again you know? It’s faster when I’m in a hurry, especially late at night when they are closing in 15-20 minutes. Also, I’d like to get back on the bike to get my exercise again.

I’m Sorting Things Out Easier

On By Michel McDonaldIn Books, eBookLeave a comment

When I decided that I wanted to write a book about my life, I never thought it would be as difficult as it’s turning out to be. I thought I could just start typing my memories and the words would just come onto the screen. I never thought that my brain would confuse the sequence of events so much.

For example, when we lived in the trailer in 1985/86, we lived in several different places and for some odd reason I thought we were living with my parents friends Cindy and Ron then the trailer parks but I got it all wrong, it was the other way around.

So what I thought I would do to make it so much easier is to type out a list of all the stories that I have then go through the list one item at a time. Type out each story then print them out on 3×5 cards and put them in an organizer.

Yeah I know, my handwriting sucks

This way, when I have all the stories typed out I can sort the story cards in the correct sequence.  I also thought that I would store all the individual files on a USB memory stick and keep that inside this box so if my hard drive crashes I’ll still have all my files.

I’ve never written a book before and this is a system that I think will work for me. I don’t know if this is something other writers do but it’s what I’m going to do.

When I save the files I might just save them to html files. This way when I’m ready to create the epub file, I can just import all the html files then I won’t have to worry about copying and pasting anything. I can just sort the stories in Sigil according to their timeline after I have sorted the hard copies out.

Maybe it will be simpler than I thought it would be.

How to Lose Friends and Alienate People

On By Michel McDonaldIn MoviesLeave a comment

We went to the movies today and saw the movie How To Lose Friends & Alienate People.  First off let me just start by saying that my favourite actor now is Simon Pegg.  I loved him in Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz.

With that said I wasn’t as happy with this movie as I was with the others.  From the advertisements that I’ve seen I thought his character was going to be a lot more annoying than he was.  I thought it was going to be pissing people off left and right to the very end.  It was a good movie, it just wasn’t what I expected.

I do recommend this movie because it has Simon Pegg in it and he is a very good and funny actor and it was a good movie.

Unfortunately, it was in the tiny theater with the tiny screen and we were the only 2 watching it.  I guess it’s been there for a while or it didn’t get high sales so they pushed it to the little screen.

Political Pumpkins

On By Michel McDonaldIn HalloweenLeave a comment

Today we were at the doctor’s office and I was thinking I wonder if I can find a John McCain pumpkin pattern to carve.  Then maybe 20 minutes later Darrin asked if I could find a John McCain pumpkin pattern and I was like OMG I was just thinking about that today hehe.  So… I looked and found one.  He also wanted me to do this Hilary pumpkin for his friend from high school.

Beast Legends at 1am?

On By Michel McDonaldIn TVLeave a comment

Every Thursday night I turn to the SyFy channel to watch Destination Truth then Beast Legends.  For some odd reason Ghost Hunters is on instead.  Last week Ghost Hunters took Beast Legends time slot as well and I thought something was very strange about that but I didn’t investigate it until tonight.

I went to the Beast Legends page on the SyFy website and the first thing that I noticed was the time change on the image (above) that says 1am.

1am?  Really?  Did it get that bad of a rating that they had to change it to 1am?  I mean sure, the fictional characters they are looking for are far fetched from reality but you could say the same thing about Destination Truth as well.

I wasn’t too impressed with Beast Legends but I did watch it because I thought that the 3D graphics they were creating to build the beasts was kind of cool.  Then they had the little 1 or 2 minute movie at the end which only reminded me of an original SyFy movie lol.

If they are moving it to 1am permanently then I’m not even going to bother watching it anymore.  Yes I’m usually up at that time anyway but I’m not going to watch it if it’s so bad that they had to move it to 1am.  I’m loyal to some shows but not that one.

It’s too bad because the concept of the show was interesting.