It has been a crazy week, but in a good way. I’ve been racing to create an arsenal of materials and am slowly letting my babies out into the world. It is heart wrenching, and like a child going off to kindergarten for the for time, I am frightened on what will happen. Will people like them? Will they get in trouble? Did I prepare them for the big day well enough?

This week was focused on closing up the old projects. Stalkers has been my baby for years and I have sat on it and prepared it and sat on it again. In the end, I refused to do much with it. I’m so scared that it will never be good enough, and it won’t be anything if I don’t release the whole thing into the wild. So… I am pulling up my big girl panties and sending it off like a submarine. Two books are done and shipped out, and I am hoping to have the third one complete by the end of the month at the latest (at the earliest it will be next week).

My other big project is my contribution to Kindle Vella. It is a new program created by Amazon that allows authors to publish their works as serialized stories. Some of the greatest stories of all times have been created this way and I hope to do the same. Stories like North and South, The Count of Monte Cristo, Vanity Fair, Treasure Island, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and so many more. Now one of my stories called Ultramarine will be a serialized story as well. I will be releasing it one chapter per week. I don’t have the whole thing written yet, but I am hoping having this deadline will light a fire under my ….um….under carriage.

The last, but not least, item done this week was a photo shoot for our monthly shoot. This was our own version of a damsel in distress. We had a lovely damsel (Rebecca Munroe) and her knight in shining armor (Mark Longo) posing up on Bailey's Ravine Sunday afternoon. Then we switched it up and had our damsel save the knight. Even at 5pm in the evening, it was still a whopping 90+ degrees. Becky had on a long sleeve dress with layers attached to the back while Mark was wearing several pounds of heavy armor. There was a lot of sweat, but the two of them took the shots like troopers. Even Mike and I were layered in sweat by the end of the shoot. I'm so glad it is done as it was very hot, and I can't wait to edit the pictures. I've only had the opportunity to load them on the computer so far. 

Projects completed for the week:

Stalkers: The Resurrection – Kindle is available for purchase (this was technically done last week)

Stalkers: The Resurrection – It is available on paperback but I have not approved final cover yet

Stalkers: The Illusion – Kindle is available for purchase

Stalkers: The Illusion – It is currently submitted and in review for paperback version on Amazon

Ultramarine – The first two chapter have been released and will be available on Kindle Vella when it opens! My goal is to release a chapter a week until it is complete.

Damsel in Distress photo shoot at Bailey's Ravine in North Franklin, CT with Rebecca Munroe and Mark Longo

Hanfu Princess photo edits are complete 

-I am currently doing final edits for Stalkers: The New Covenant. Adrian was getting a little wiry in the book and I have to clean him up a bit.

And all this was done with multiple dentist appointments, unexpected half days due to heat, zoom calls to old colleges, field days at school, and the wrapping up of the school year! I feel so happy and accomplished!!!!

The lights are low as the meal presses on. There are five plates piled high with food at the dining room table, but only four people are present. A single candle stands in the spot where the fifth person should be seated. No one speaks a word, but mischievous smiles are aplenty. We are all waiting to see who can make it through the entire meal without making a single sound.

oct-1 A Full Moon - A Blue Moon

Have you ever hear someone say:  “once in a blue moon?” It is actually in old saying that meant once a year. It was the way people told time passing long ago. In fact, there are thirteen full moons a year in our present calendar and only one lucky month a year gets to host this grand event. It actually changes months each year. This year it is in October. The first full moon will be on October 1^st and is called the harvest moon (the full moon that is closest to the autumn equinox is always called the harvest moon because…well…it was a heads up that it was the time to harvest the crops). The second full moon is – ironically – on Halloween and is called a Blue moon.

So…once in a blue moon, there is a blue moon on All Hallows Even, when the holiday is seated on a weekend…and anything could occur! Hahaha! (Enter my evil laugh here)

The Sailor Moon Project

Aka Changing a 40-year-old woman into a 14 year old anime character

About a month ago, Mike and I decided that we were going to do a test shoot once a week to continue in our craft of photography. The only time we took off was the Memorial day holiday weekend as it was too busy. This shoot was going to be our forth test shoot so far this year and since we were having a tough time getting a model (covid-19 social distancing), I had to be the model. me sailor moon-2

This was not going to be cool.

Me. I. Oh God! The model?

Sailor Moon was one of my favorite animes as a teenager. In fact, you could say it was how I met Mike Donatello in the first place. Back in the mid-90s, products couldn’t be bought as easily as today. If I wanted Sailor Moon paraphernalia, I had to go to Hot Topic or Sarges Comics in New London. Well, I started to go to Sarges a lot and that is where I met Mike. Long story short, the owner (Bob) pointed out that we were both photographers and we’ve been friends and business partners since.

Now, back to the ugly part. I was going to be Sailor Moon and it was going to be extremely tough because I am now 40-years-old and am the heaviest I’ve ever been in my life (188 lbs)other than right before the birth of my son (203 lbs). I also have a large tumor (non-cancerous) on my uterus so I look heavier because it protrudes. My apologies, I’m not saying this to be gross. I’m just trying to point out how impossible this shoot was going to be.

We had to be very creative with the shoot due to these factors, so a plan needed to be made. The concept was to photograph me from behind so that my stomach was not seen. We also wanted to show a scene instead of a girl standing there looking at a camera. There are way too many pretty pictures of Sailor Moon cosplay on the internet and we wanted to be different. We also decided to use a very old outfit that I had for Free Comic Book Day. It was missing pieces but that was okay because we wanted her dirty and appearing at the end of a battle.    

81358618_2680790435290176_7254572587580129280_oPhoto of Melissa Damon and Katy Miller. Photographed by Robert Miller. The end decision was taken from a Sailor Moon episode itself. There is a moment after her first battle where she watches the sun rise from afar. Although we were using the Eternal Sailor Moon costume instead of her traditional one, we decided to do something similar to this scene.

We wanted to shoot on a day where there were a lot of dark clouds. These were supposed to symbolize an oncoming battle. Our decision for the shoot was made in less than 24 hours as we were hopping on the earliest day of clouds with no rain in the forecast. Unfortunately, we did not get the full clouds we wanted because the fog rolled in, but it was still close enough.

The day was Friday, May 29^{th of} 2020 and we decided to go up to Rocky Neck State Park as our location. Aaron took the photos with my camera (and my son Connor took an epic shot while we were there) and Mike took photos with his. I was twitching as I stood as the model. I wanted to be behind the camera so bad but I took it for the team.

We had to unfortunately leave the beach earlier than expected as a group of teenagers came and started to make the worst comments I had heard in a long time. I was saddened by this but also knew that people are bored during this pandemic and acting out of character. Most of the group was just having fun but three broke off from the group and they appeared to be vlogging. They saw our shoot and went into detail on what they were going to do to me. Mike, Aaron, and I exchanged looks. Although normally we would change to a different location in the park if we had a client and something like this happened (ironically, we’ve never had something like this happen before), my son was with us and I did not want him to hear it. We chose to quietly pack up and go. Luckily, Connor was having a field day building a sand castle and wasn’t paying any attention. me sailor moon-1_pe3b

The edits involved quite a bit of liquifying but they came out better than I thought. I was the most excited about a photo that my son took that I thought was amazing. I didn’t even edit his shot. I was a particularly proud Momma Bear. As for the other photos, I wanted to give a fine art feel to them because they were inspired by anime. I didn’t want them to just be a photographic take on the show. I needed more. I fell in love with a couple of them and am pretty proud of the shoot.

Someday, I would love to lose a little bit of this weight and retake the shoot. I would also love to add in Chibi Usa and make it more of a hand-off of power. It would be neat to have an older version of Sailor Moon passing the torch onto the younger hero.