Too funny!

Check it out:

Star Wars: Retold (by someone who hasn’t seen it) from Joe Nicolosi on Vimeo.

The Nerd Superbowl is Upon Us

This is a day I look forward to all year.

Tonight…I shall park myself in front of the TV. I have beer. I have chips. I have buffalo wings. The phone’s ringer will be off.

Because tonight, my friends, it is the Survivor Season Premiere. And I take my Survivor seriously.

(i. am. so. excited.!!!)

Things Jill Is Not So Good At —

The X-Box 360 Version:

1) Beautiful Katamari. Have you heard of this game? Probably not. I know I was all “Whuuu?” when a friend suggested I get it. So I bought it and did not realize it is some sort of Sgt. Peppers crack-pipe dream that is probably only sensible when you are smoking a little something-something or drunk. Allow me to show you exhibits:

Do not adjust your settings - this is really the game.

And

Rolling a big ball of random crap is your duty as prince!

Needless to say, being sober and not on any illegal substances, I suck at this game.

2) Rock Band — I know what you’re thinking. How can you possibly suck at Rock Band, right? There’s FOUR different instruments, so you’re bound to be good at one of them, at least?

That would make you wrong, my friend. Wrong.

Now, I love me some Rock Band. My husband is a virtuouso with the game guitar, so I thought I’d master the drums, right? Easy enough? Just hit stuff and make notes happen? Such a foolish thought.

First of all, there’s a kick pedal. Now, it’s bad enough that my hands have to be doing something, but you’re asking me to use a kick pedal too? No one told me I had to be coordinated for video games! Add in the fact that the drums have to be hit in the center for this to actually work, and that I nearly stabbed myself in the eye with the drumstick on the recoil?

Drummer in the Rock Band was short lived, alas.

It looks like this...until you fail, of course.

So I thought I’d try my hand at the microphone instead.

Here’s a little something about me. I love to sing. LOVE. I’m even fairly good at it. I made regional choir in grade school and took voice lessons for a while. Problem is, I don’t like singing loud enough where others can hear me. It freaks me out. This, as you can imagine, might be a tiny problem if you are playing a game called “Rock Band” and your part involves making noise into a microphone. But my husband swore he wouldn’t look at me while we played (which was important) so I gave it a shot.

The upside? The microphone for Rock Band is really, really sensitive. You can barely sing into it (read: inaudible) and still score the same as if you’re belting it out.

The downside? To go into Overdrive (which is like Star Power for Guitar Hero), you have to sing a note into the ‘yellow’ power part of the bar. You can see it on the end of this screenshot:

By the Power of Grayskull....

The problem with this? This part of the song is NOT sensitive to soft sounds. I guess a real rock’n'roll girl would say “YEAH!” or “WOO!” or something at this point.

Me? I went for “Hey”. It’s a little inelegant, but functional.

Second problem – you don’t have a lot of time to “HEY” into the microphone, because it zooms by pretty fast. This makes me nervous, so I end up shouting it into the microphone.

Third problem – If the word you shout is too short, it doesn’t take effect. So you have to do it again, longer, the next time the yellow bar comes around.

This is what a typical song is with me on the mike:

woah, we’re halfway there Woah Oh, Livin on a prayer, HEY, take my hand and we’ll make it I swear, HEYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY

After a few rounds of this, my husband sorta begged me not to do the microphone anymore. I can’t blame him. I nearly shattered his eardrums on an Iron Maiden song.

Now I pretty much have given up and just do bass on easy. It’s not glamorous but no one gets hurt.

3) Dance Dance Revolution — For this, you need coordination AND good motor skills AND be able to jump around AND don’t have size ten feet like me, or you’ll keep hitting the wrong notes with your ginormous toes.

You probably need chemical substances to appreciate this one too, come to think of it...

(Seriously, this game is fun, but I suck royally at it).

The tutorials aren’t so bad and beginner? Kind of fun. A lot of fun, actually. But then sometimes your big size 10 toe slips and when you go to the next song, your setting is suddenly on “Oni” (Which I think is Japanese for “You’ve done it now, Sucka!”) and then the arrows are flying across the screen faster than your brain can process, and you fall to the ground weeping.

Not that this happened to me, of course.

The sad thing? All these games are *really* fun. I just wish I wasn’t quite so uncoordinated so I could play them for longer.

Is this thing on?

I’m still alive! I swear! Quit sending me emails saying “Where did you go??”

I’m just…not doing anything interesting, people. Really. I have nothing to blog about. Honest. Same ol’ same ol.

And because I’ve been tagged on Facebook a million billion times, here’s 25 things about me.

1. When I am nervous, I have a fear of pauses in conversation. Usually this results in me babbling incoherently a mile a minute, and saying anything that crosses my mind. This usually ends up frightening the other person.

2. I also have a nervous smile. When I am nervous or uncomfortable, I smile a lot. This usually results in weirdos hitting on me (because they think I’m digging them) and getting into worse trouble when I mess up because I look like I’m smirking.

3. I still get carded for beer.

4. My favorite book from my childhood was WHERE THE RED FERN GROWS by Wilson Rawls. I have read it 100x and sobbed my heart out every time.

5. Shamefully, I am a Brangelina fangirl.

6. I favor one of my cats over the other, which is probably cruel.

7. I have a terrible fear of getting lost. Nothing can get me in a panic attack faster than missing an exit while driving and not knowing where I’m going.

8. I once won 2nd Place in a Magic:The Gathering tournament (NEEEEEEEEERRRRRRD)

9. I also cheated in the tournament (played one too many cards), but I didn’t realize it until after the fact. The opponent I beat was eight years old. Proud moment.

10. I really regret never finishing college, but to this day, I don’t know what I would have majored in.

11. I can hold a massive grudge. I can’t recall what I did last night or what I was talking about five minutes ago, but if there is perceived insult? I’ll remember forever.

12. I’m really easy to talk out of things, alas. For some reason I always trust other people’s judgment more than my own, and all it takes is a few good words about something to make me do a total flip of opinion.

13. I hate talking on the phone.

14. At 5 I was diagnosed with scoliosis (which does not set in until adolescence, usually) and I wore a Boston brace from age 5 until I had back surgery at the age of 15.

15. I can calculate the taxes on a paycheck down to a dime but I cannot balance my own checkbook.

16. My favorite song of the moment is the Veronicas “Untouched” and I listen to it on repeat over and over again. 30x yesterday.

17. I rub my lower lip while I’m driving. No idea why.

18. It’s really hard to come up with 25 things.

19. No kids. Don’t want any, don’t plan on having any.

20. I am terribly geeky in regards to the Eighteenth Dynasty in Ancient Egypt and can probably tell you entirely too much about any of the rulers or their families.

21. Writing-wise, I am obsessed with Norse mythology and valkyries. So far I’ve written two novels about Norse myth, and come up with a new concept/spin every week.

22. I recently came to the realization that I am a super-hard critique partner. I tend to tear something apart at the seams, and this is not necessarily the best approach.

23. I have multiple novels that no one has seen but me. One of them is my favorite book ever written. I should fix it someday.

24. I hate 90% of what I read, so I normally end up re-reading old favorites over and over again. I am just super picky.

25. I thought I’d never move from paper books to e-books but Jane talked me into trying the Sony Reader and OMG ILU SONY E-READER. MY PRECIOUSSSSSS….

Is there anything crueler than Lowfat Ranch dressing?

Because that is what they put on my salad today, rendering it virtually inedible. BLEH.

Seriously people, though, I got nothing. I haven’t updated in almost a week (maybe more than a week!) because I really do have nothing going on. There’s only so many times you can write “I did some boring stuff and then I went to bed.”

Still loving the new car. Even driving across town in traffic feels like a treat. On top of this, it has a RADIO so I am in heaven. My last car’s radio busted over a year ago and let me tell you, the most boring drive ever is the one in complete silence. In the past year all the songs on the radio seem to have changed, too, and I’m in heaven! I love the Taylor Swift “Love Story”, Pink’s “So What”, Katy Perry (I totally missed out on Katy Perry!), the Veronicas, Rihanna, and the All-American Rejects (who apparently have a new album coming out). Good stuff. My husband cringes when we get in the car but I’m loving it, and that’s all that’s important.

I’m also shifting gears momentarily in the writing. Since we’re waiting to submit and I’m between edits, I’m toying with a new project. It’s super-seekrit and I pretty much haven’t told anyone what it is about, in case it poops out on me. But so far I’m on the third chapter and I really like it! I’m not sure if the voice is exactly what I was aiming for, but it’s making me happy right now.

Oh, and have you congratulated Holly McDowell? Because she just signed with a fabulous agent and I am so excited for her! She writes very slippy, literary fantasy and I can’t wait for us to be on the “M” shelf together at the library.

Awesome website is full of awesome.

The revamp of my purty, purty website is almost complete, yo. Thanks to my talented husband (who can sniff his way around photoshop while I cannot), I have a nice pretty header bar. Ooo, pretty.

I’ll be adding the links page over the weekend, and then I suppose at some point, I should actually start adding more content! Like, say, more zombie fairy tales.

Want to win an ebook reader?

Kresley Cole is giving one away:

ZOMG

I love you, Google Alerts! Because you brought me this:

http://authors.simonandschuster.com/Jill-Myles/46456926

OMG YOU GUYS I’M HAVING A BOOK PUBLISHED. IT’S LIKE IT’S NOT JUST IN MY HEAD ANYMORE. AND THEY WILL EVEN BE IN EBOOK. ZOMG AGAIN.

*runs around the room*

(And the author photo is a dead ringer for me – j/k)

ETA – I did not realize at the time that the page says that the books will be out in February & March 2009 (as in, a month from now). This is wrong. As far as I know, pub date is still 2010. After all, there are still no covers or anything on Amazon, and I don’t think that’s part of the plan.

Hello world!

This is not an error! This is Jill, trying to update her webpage to wordpress. Stay tuned. I’m sure I’ll figure something out in the next few days.