Firstly, today’s Antonio Vivaldi’s birthday, and I’ve been listening to his works in hopes of getting some inspiration from them. Yep, I’ve got a pile of cheap classical CDs, and I love ‘em. Thanks, Best Buy, for that awesome section you had once upon a time – seriously, ninety-nine cents for a classical CD? This little peasant girl was thrilled speechless.

I’m trying to gear myself up for what’s next on my plate, which is a series of short fantasy stories (original folktales), and I’ll admit I’m a bit freaked. I hope I’m able to write to length again like I used to. Egad, those days feel like a lifetime away. Since I plan for them to be about three times longer than the average short story I published last year, I’ll have a lot more wiggle room with the narrative structure, and people won’t have to pay a cent more since they’ll all fall within the same word count range that the previous stories were written in.

And if that last sentence was in any way grammatically iffy, I blame another soul-crushing shift at my day job. That plus Mercury in retrograde.

Anyway, maybe indulging in Vivaldi’s stuff will help (did I mention how cheap my classical CDs are? They’re cheap!). I usually listen to classical music to get myself going with fantasy fiction, especially since the stories tend to be historical fantasy.

And moving on from there, I never knew that a film was made on Rudolfo Anaya’s novel! I want to see it!

Actually, I wonder if it’s best to reread the book first since it’s been almost twenty years since I first picked it up. My memory of the story runs more along emotional lines than actual plot. I remember telling myself that this was the strangest coming-of-age story I’ve ever read and at the same time marveling at the imagery.

I’m really not doing the book any justice by admitting to remembering only one aspect of my reading experience, but the effect on me was strong enough, even after all these years, to draw out a pretty positive response when I stumbled across the trailer.