We interrupt this broadcast...

My dear readers: 

If you're wondering how my costume progress is coming after last week's major milestone of completing the bustier, I am happy to report that it is coming along well.  I completed transferring all the embroidery designs to the right front skirt panel and I'm presently following a very aggressive schedule in order to try getting them completed by the end of this week.  If I can keep up the schedule, and devote most of Saturday to sewing, there is a reasonable chance that I will have a costume ready to wear for Dragon Con by that time.

Wow.

After that is done, then I'll let myself breath again and go back and post some of those tutorial-style installments I've been promising.

In the meantime, I have a diversion of sorts.

My dear friend and co-author, Laura Josephsen, has recently published a standalone teen novel, as shown below:

Confessions from the Realm of the Underworld (Also Known as High School)

by Laura Josephsen

"Write what you know."

Persephone "Sephie" Benson scoffs when her creative writing teacher throws that little gem out there. Maybe this advice would work for a professional skydiver or a baseball star or a ninja princess. It's not so great for a high school student who doesn't even know what to do with the rest of her life. Add in being the oldest of six girls, having Responsibilities with a capital R, and living in a town the size of a tick, and you've got a recipe for boring soup.

At least, that's what Sephie thinks until her senior year. Now, her grandfather is losing his house. One of her sisters plays a starring role in the local high school scandal. Even things with her best friend Joey aren't the same. As Sephie deals with the changes in her life, she finds that nothing is quite what she expects--and that sometimes, the most extraordinary life can be the one that seems the most ordinary.

I love this book.  I've read it three times at least, and skimmed it a half-dozen more times.  While I've read my share, I don't usually enjoy "real life" books to the point of raving about them (by that I mean, I'd much rather have dragons or swordfights or magic or other worlds or all of the above-- I'm a "genre" reader to the core), but there are always exceptions to everyone's usual, and this is one of mine.  As Laura herself will tell you, she doesn't usually write this kind of story, either, but so it happened.

Maybe it's because Sepphie Benson is so real and likeable and relate-able, she seems to just climb off the page and unceremoniously take a spot at your family dining table, munching on potato chips and making faces at you (but all in good fun).  The same goes for her family and friends.  You get sucked into their story, full of the familiar ups and downs of life, humor, warmth, heartache, and love, and learn, like Sepphie, that the things that are "cliché" about life have become so for very good reasons.

Everyone should read this book.  The even better news is, it's economical! I bought it for Kindle and I'm totally going to buy it in paperback too, as part of my next Amazon run.  You can click on the picture above for links to the book's Amazon page, and both formats available for purchase.  Give it a try.  You'll finish it in a single afternoon/evening.  And then you'll probably read it again.