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 |  My latest blogging endeavor to catalog my activities here on WdC |
 ~Myself~ My name is Cat Voleur and, as you've probably guessed, I'm a writer. I worked as a freelancer for a few years, taking several ghostwriting positions before finally deciding to start doing stuff under my own name. I've had a handful of small publications and am working on some bigger stuff now. ~My Blog~ This is my second WdC blog. I'm starting it because I just went through and renovated a lot of the things from my portfolio and I thought it would be a good time to get a fresh start. The book is titled after a song from one of my favorite Coheed and Cambria albums. It's mostly going to be about my and what I'm up to on the site. There will sometimes be other stuff like promotions for cool stuff that I find on other sites that I think you guys might be interested in as well as promos for cool content that I find on here. ~My Other Projects~ If you're interested in checking out some of the other work that I do, feel free to check out some of the following links: In Defense of the Horror ~ My Horror Blog hosted on WordPress https://indefenseofthehorror.wordpress.com/ And there's also a horror tumblr, for those of you who are interested: http://in-defense-of-the-horror.tumblr.com/ Toxic Bubblegum ~ A collaborative project I co-founded that provides free resources to creators. http://www.toxicbubblegum.com/ |
 Intro Hey guys! Sorry I vanished. I wrote an entry about how I'd like to be on more and then I wasn't on at all for a few days  There was a good reason though, I promise, and I think you guys as fellow writers may definitely appreciate where I've been over the weekend.  Offsite My parents wanted to take me on a trip to the West Virginia Book Festival as an early birthday present. At first I didn't know why - we don't live in West Virginia and it seemed like kind of a long drive for a local book festival. Then I found out that one of the guest speakers was none other than my all time favorite author, Joe Hill. It's something I was planning on doing a post about the morning before I left, but then we ended up leaving a day earlier than planned. Why? Because wouldn't you know it, the guest speaker the night before Joe Hill was none other than R.L. Stine. It was absolutely amazing. I got to meet the man who first made me think I want to be a horror writer, and the man who currently makes me want to be a better horror writer, all in one amazing weekend. I got to see them both talk, I got pictures of them, and I got a fuck ton of books signed. I got 3 of my favorite Goosebumps books signed and virtually my entire Joe Hill collection signed (except the ones that I left with my boyfriend to read.) It was a really great weekend - and I'm sorry that I vanished, but this time it was totally worth it and not sad at all. I also made some great animal friends. They had a reptile area at the convention center, I got to meet some adorable corn snakes, and there were three cats who swarmed my hotel room until I fed them. All in all it was a pretty good weekend. The only downside was that I literally injured myself from carrying too many books. Considering they were all signed, it was 100% worth it.  Personal Since this is the personal section I allotted for myself when designing the blog template - I am going to allow myself to get personal for a moment, because I've been thinking a lot about my personal stuff this last week or so, especially the last couple days. I was always such a stubborn kid. I got really loyal to things that didn't always matter because it was easy for me to get attached to the concept of stuff, and I didn't really like change. A good example of this is when I was nine my favorite color was black, but I didn't admit it out loud to anyone until I was ten. It felt like it was this really terrible secret because up until then my favorite color had always been purple and the idea that I had outgrown something as simple as my favorite color just seemed terrible. Even up into fairly recent years, one thing it's always hard for me to let go of has been favorite authors. J.K. Rowling was my favorite author for the longest time because anyone who could make something as important as Harry Potter was obviously, like a god to me. Even when horror became my favorite genre and I was reading more Stephen King than anything else, J.K. Rowling was my favorite because she had written my favorite book. Eventually I was able to say that Stephen King was my favorite author, but Harry Potter was still my favorite book and then I read To Kill A Mockingbird, which I knew right away was my all time favorite book and sorting through that was really hard for me, even at thirteen. Harry Potter had been my whole life and then suddenly it wasn't my favorite anymore, and J.K. Rowling was already not my favorite author and it was like, I didn't know who I was anymore. The first Joe Hill book I ever read was Heart Shaped Box, and it was good. It was so far beyond good, and I re-read it several times, but I sort of assumed it would be anomaly. Like, no one can write that good all the time, right? A couple years ago I read Horns for the first time which was somehow even better, and I was so shocked. I read 20th Century Ghosts after that just to make sure that Joe Hill really was that talented. The first story in the collection is called Best New Horror and it, to this day, is my favorite horror short story. I read the entire book in one sitting and by the end of it, I pretty much knew that Joe Hill was my favorite author. By that time I had gotten through a lot of the emotional stress that I used to get from having new favorite things. At that point in my life I was overcoming a lot of personal trauma from when I was younger and taking a big step in overcoming my fear of commitment by moving out of state with my boyfriend - which was terrifying for me at the time. I had grown a lot, and I feel like I've grown a lot, even since then. I've learned a lot about myself the last few years, I've come to terms with a lot of things, and I still have a long way to go overcoming the bigger things, but at least now I have a better sense of my weaknesses and the things I have left to work on. This weekend though, I spent a lot of time thinking about who I was a kid. I kept trying to imagine explaining to my loyal-past-the-point-of-reason-five-year-old-self that a day would come where I'd go to a book festival, and having One Day At Horrorland signed wouldn't be the most important thing to happen to me that weekend - or like, even trying to convince fifteen year old me that one day I'd like reading stuff by Stephen King's son more than I liked reading stuff by Stephen King. Then the one that really got me is trying to explain to any previous me that one day Harry Potter wouldn't be the Daniel Radcliffe character I was most in love with. It's always really weird, the stuff that makes you realize you've grown. All of those things seem pretty insignificant on a large scale, but it made me realize that I am in fact, a different person than I used to be. I do have one more personal thing to blab about from this weekend. The boyfriend that I was so afraid to move in with a couple years ago, has moved into our first, official apartment. I'm not there with him, but I genuinely want to be. I've been trying to get my life together away from him for a bit, but when he finally got his own place, and then referred to it as "our apartment" I realize that those words really don't scare me as much as they used to. I'm not cured. I still have anxiety attacks from time to time regarding relationship stuff, but I'm so much better than I used to be, than I was even at the beginning of my current relationship. This next spring we'll be celebrating five years together, and we've been talking about getting tattoos together. The one we've been leaning towards are Horns themed - "Us" and "Yes" in Morse code. Incidentally, "Us" and "Yes" are how I had our copies of Horns inscribed when I met Joe Hill this weekend. Writing.com Now stepping away from the weirdly personal nostalgic emotional stuff, I do have some exciting WdC news that I'm really excited to share with you guys. First up, I'd like to thank my latest sponsor for the "NaNoWriMo Write-A-Thon"  .Escape Artist  is the fourth awesome person who has offered to sponsor me next month!  Thank you so much.Secondly, I'd like to thank whatever wonderful person nominated me for Best Reviewer for the 2017 Quills Award. Cat Voleur customizes her review template according to what she is reviewing. Her reviews are a pleasure to read, insightful and always encouraging. She is the reviewer I want to be when I grow up! It's such an honor to be nominated (alongside so many fantastic reviewers) and reading the nomination note really, really made my day. Thank you!  Reviews I have gotten a couple review requests, and I will be getting to them soon. I still don't have my official requests turned on because it seems silly to turn them on right before turning them off again for NaNoWriMo - but if you have something you'd like reviewed in the next couple days, please feel free to PM me. I'd like to squeeze in as many as possible before my focus goes back to writing 100% Conclusion This has been a very emotional week for me, but it's also been incredibly awesome and more than a little inspiring. I'm looking forward to writing back to everyone on here who left me messages while I was meeting my idols. Also, please check back later tonight/tomorrow because I'll be announcing my NaNoWriMo project soon and I'm very, VERY excited about it this year. |
| Intro When I posted my last entry, I really thought I was ready to get right back to my usual pattern here on WdC, and that turned out not to be the case. Everyone has been so nice and supportive, but it was harder to become re-immersed in the community than I had planned on. I think part of that is just the time constraints. I was spending a lot of time on WdC just before my hiatus, and while I was gone I found other ways to fill that time. Now I have to try and balance those things, and it can be really tricky. The other thing that's holding me back a little is my anxiety. My time on the site has really opened me up in the community and made me comfortable, but it's amazing how being gone just a little while was able to make me feel like an outsider all over again. This is something that is made better by the fact that I do have so many amazing friends on here who have been very welcoming and helped to remind me why I'm on here in the first place. What makes me really nervous is the idea of jumping back into contests. The last event that I took part in didn't end well and it's made me very hesitant to try and enter anything new. Fortunately, that's a fear that I plan on tackling soon. Writing.com I plan on participating in a really awesome event:
I entered last year as well, and even though it didn't go the best for me, I feel really good about this year. I have a project in mind that I'll be announcing soon, and I already have three awesome sponsors: Osirantinous  Brooklyn  Choconut  Thank you so much to all of you guys, you are the best Conclusion Today I'm going to be spending some time online, working a little on my portfolio and catching up on reviews. Thank you guys for reading and hopefully you'll be hearing from me soon. All the best, Cat |
| Intro Hey guys! As I'm sure a bunch of you know, I've been on hiatus from the site. I was spending a lot of time on here to avoid drama in my life and then when there was a bunch of drama on here, it was just a little bit too much for me to deal with and I took a step back for awhile to sort things out. I only meant to be gone a week or so, but I was gone a little more than a month. Everyone was so wonderful to me, I got a lot of very positive and encouraging messages nearly every day I was gone and it meant so much to me. I am currently catching up on emails/notes/contests/forums but I just wanted to take some time out of that to post this and let everyone know what I've been up to while showing off my fancy new blog. Offsite Almost all of my news this time around is offsite news this time around, so I thought I'd let you guys know some of what I've been up to (aside from writing like crazy.)  One of my biggest time commitments right now is actually on a collaborative project that I'm doing for a youtube channel: Stupidexport One of the podcasts on there is a tabletop campaign recording called Adventures! and I'm in it.... eventually. I think I come in at episode 7, which might or might not be posted at the time of this blog being written - we record in advance so I have a tough time keeping track. I'm going to just go ahead and shamelessly plug the first episode of that here: Adventures! Episode 1: A Natural One We're actually working on a novelization of the book, which is why it's been eating up so much of my time, but it's a project I really believe in and am having a ton of fun working on. While we're done recording the podcast, I am also featured as a fire elemental named Cynna in a related podcast that is still being taped now, called Adventures: Soulbound. I re-did the graphics for the Toxic Bubblegum site, and restructured our business model. We used to be a zine primarily and sell subscriptions, but now the digital version of the zine is 100% free and we're focused more at supplying free web content for creators. There's a lot of really cool stuff on there, and we're adding more all the time, so you guys should check it out. Toxic Bubblegum The last big thing that I've done is networking for my horror blog: In Defense of the Horror I lost a lot of followers after what was supposed to be a promotional event celebrating the release of Stephen King's new movie... but let's just say unpopular opinions have made me, well, unpopular. All the same, I've been getting more content ready to go for my busiest blogging month, and have talked with a lot of horror content creators. Writing.com Since I've been back on, a lot of what I've done here on WdC has been reading and responding to emails, but there are a few changes that you may have noticed. My portfolio is no longer private. I'm still making changes to it, but it's mostly back online. All of the stories that are available now will remain available, even while I finish edits. The ones that are private are things that are undergoing the biggest edits, and I'm hoping to have those cleaned up and rehosted soon. New content. I haven't had time to get all of the new stuff I've written up yet, but I did post a couple new pieces, mainly the ones I had to type up for the other people in the podcast.Here are a couple of my new excerpts that I'm working with:
New blog. And of course, there's my new blog here. I had been wanting to switch to a more organized form of blogging for awhile, and now seemed like a good time to do it. You'll notice this is a little more structured, which I'm hoping will make it easier to keep tabs on my projects and communicate with everyone where my creative energies are going, without ranting quite as much. (There are sections for me to rant in, but because they're labeled, it will hopefully be easier for people to skim entries from now on.) Reviews I haven't done any reviews since I've been back online, but I'm about to start taking requests again. In the future, this section of my entries will serve as a sort of promotional area for reviews that I've already done and pieces by other members that I'd like to share. Right now however I'm just letting you guys know that if you have anything you'd like me to review/promote, now would be a great time to ask. Conclusion That about wraps up the stuff that I wanted to cover. It's really good to be back, and I will get back to working on catching up with you guys and cleaning up my portfolio. Thank you for reading, those of you who did, and I will be seeing you around. Sincerely, Cat |
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There is a constant stream of stray cats in our area. I said three was my limit with also having our big dog to care for, too, but now my limit is four! 
This is a great review and it's good to have you back Kat. Also, thank you for reviewing my poem, I will catch you up on that as I am a bit behind with myself and work. Loves Ya. 
