A new "Half-Blood Prince" trailer, writing, 24th birthday tomorrow, etc.

I opened up iTunes to see if any new podcasts were up so I could get them on my iPod before walking to Wal-Mart today to look for patterns for a Halloween costume, since I decided kind of last minute that I am going to the Halloween Party the Asperger's group is having on Friday night. And I glanced at the "Downloads" screen and an episode of MuggleCast was downloading that was titled "Live HBP International Trailer Talk." When I saw that, I was like, "What the--? There's a new trailer?" With the last HBP trailer, I heard about it on my homepage (yahoo.com) and with this trailer, it came out yesterday online and I didn't see a thing about it on my homepage today. Anyway, I headed to The Leaky Cauldron to try to watch it in their video galleries (as I did with one of the HBP trailers before) but I couldn't get to the galleries so I had to follow a link to their YouTube channel, and there it was. Here it is:



It is some trailer. I wish it hadn't been nearly so fast-paced cause I had to rewatch some stuff. I love the ending too (when I listened to MuggleCast later, some people there hated it, but when I listened to Pottercast's podcast on the trailer tonight while cleaning my desk, they all loved it). But maybe it's because I'm still kind of a Harry x Hermione shipper.

I have been getting back in the mood for writing lately. I'm not sure what prompted it. Today I brought along my composition notebooks with notes for Darkly Bound and The Elven Princess respectively and looked at them. Well mainly I looked at the Elven Princess one, which is pretty much generic notes about Walden, like about the races and stuff. The stuff for Darkly Bound is just a synopsis.

I was more into the Walden stuff because it sounded more planned out (although when re-reading a Walden-set story I'd written the other day, I realized I'd defined a set "heaven" and "hell," whereas I hadn't done so in my notes...so I need to fix that). Granted, I only have a rough map of Walden at this point (with the only locations identified on it being the key locations in The Elven Princess) but then I'm no cartographer. I actually bought this marker and stuff for drawing maps and then never did draw one.

Like I was telling Amy last night on IM (we are IM'ing a lot now), fantasy seems to be my strong suit. Maybe because I really like fantasy as a genre. Darkly Bound is sci-fi, as is my unfinished novel Us Against the World, which is set in the same location and time. Darkly Bound mixes sci-fi with some fantasy elements, however, while Us Against the World is pretty much pure sci-fi ("soft sci-fi" though).

I think if I defined the world of those novels a little more, as well as the world of my still untitled CYA-related story (which is basically the same), it would help. I tried to do that by writing out the alternate history of the U.S. space program that I was using for that world, which involved people from Earth discovering the possibility of actual life on other planets as early as the Apollo 11 landing in 1969. (I think I wrote that around the time I was thinking of placing the original Lightning Girl story earlier, in like 2110, and needed to explain how in so little time we had discovered all these planets...although I may have had that idea earlier). I created a bit of pop culture with the 18-movie series Moon Colony Disaster (which is a bit of a reference to Land Before Time, this movie series that seems to go on forever for no reason).

Along with this, I need to rewrite a page or two of "William's Escape" (a Code Lyoko fanfic) to make up for pages I couldn't find when I found the manuscript while cleaning my room. Also, I want to start on my Harry Potter fanfic starring Alera Gynne, an author-created character who transfers to Hogwarts from Beauxbatons. (Hey, if Lucius Malfoy had the choice to send Draco to Durmstrang instead of Hogwarts, then you must be able to transfer from one school to another). Also, I want to work more on my ongoing plans for a Sailor Moon/Harry Potter mix story called "Witch Scouts." It's set around the time of Order of the Phoenix and stars Hermione, Parvati, Ginny, Luna, and Cho, with Crookshanks as their "talking cat/advisor." I was trying for five like in Sailor Moon, but there's not many main ladies in Harry Potter, so I had to use Parvati, who I don't know much about, and Cho, who I don't like (I'm not a HarryxCho shipper).

Hopefully, this will give me some stuff to work on.

Tomorrow (or today rather --the 28th) is my 24th birthday...woo! I have school, but afterwards Mum and I are going to shop for fabric for my Halloween costume (I found a pattern today -- it's a Regency-style dress) and then we (her and Papa and I) will go to dinner. Here is a picture of the dress, cropped from the original simplicity.com pic of the pattern cover, which has two different dresses:



Well I gotta go sorry this took so long I was IM'ing with Amy. Good night.