Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Scrivener

I finally used the Scrivener software I bought with the 50% off discount I received after being a winner of Camp NaNoWriMo August 2012. The original price was something like $40, so that's not a bad price either.

I don't use physical index cards, but the index card feature on Scrivener is awesome! You can write your outline on them and move scenes around wherever you want just by clicking and dragging. The program puts the index cards together in an outline for you in another view. I'm still trying to figure out how to use the various tools, but I'll get to that as I go on.

The program saves your progress for you every 5 seconds or however long you set it to save. That way if you forget to save or the power goes out, your work is safe.

I plan on using Scrivener to write my future books from here on out.

Robert the Haunted Doll

A couple of years ago I was listening to a podcast about Robert the Haunted Doll on Coast to Coast AM. Robert was a little boy who lived a long time ago. From what I remember, one of the family servants gave him a doll. The doll was named Robert after the little boy. Back in the day it was customary to name the doll after the child. I believe some of the boy's hairs were attached to the doll.

The boy started to do bad things and he would say that Robert (the doll) did it. I'm not sure if the servant that gave him the doll practiced voodoo or if that's what the podcast host speculated. The boy kept the doll until he was an adult. He even built a room in his house for Robert. When the boy was an adult, he beat his wife and said that Robert made him do it.

People in the neighborhood would avoid their house when they went on walks. They claimed to have seen the doll running around by itself upstairs. They could see him through the window. When the reached the house, the people would cross the street to avoid crossing in front of it.

One day an electrician came to do work in the room where Robert was. Robert the doll was sitting on a chair in the room. When the electrician was working, he heard a child running behind him, but when he turned around, no one was there. The doll was no longer in the chair.

The doll is in a museum in one of the Keys in Florida. If you want to take his picture, you have to ask his permission or else you will get bad luck. There are a lot of letters sent to the museum from people who took pictures without permission and who have had terrible bad luck. They send the photos back and apologize. Sometimes the photo will come out blurry if he doesn't want you to take a picture of him.

Robert is kept in a glass case in the museum. One of the museum workers found the case open one morning with the lights on and the dolls footprints in the dust around the case.

I may have gotten the story wrong in some areas since I heard the podcast over 2 years ago. If you are interested in reading more about him, do an online search of Robert the Haunted Doll. There are images of him online as well. He's very creepy looking.

While I was listening to this very creepy story about Robert on my iPod, I was running on the treadmill in my bedroom at night. I kept thinking I was seeing a child standing in the hall just past the bedroom door. Of course it was my imagination. To stop myself from being scared, I told myself that if that doll ever came after me, I would just kick him. Then the person on the podcast said that Robert the Haunted Doll was 3 ft. tall. Well, that scared me because that's no Elmo sized doll. That's the size of a small child.

I was totally creeped out, running by myself in the bedroom at night with my back to the room. I felt something touching my hair. At first I thought it was my husband sneaking up behind me trying to scare me. When I turned around and saw that no one was there, I screamed and nearly fell off the treadmill. I discovered that it was just my hair clip falling out of my hair. lol! I felt very foolish indeed.

Robert the Haunted Doll is still creepy and I think he was the idea behind the Chucky horror movies.


Sunday, November 18, 2012

Cover Art of La Claire Fontaine short story

This is the cover of my short story that my husband created. I think he did a great job. It is a romantic time travel story and he captured the elements from the story onto the cover perfectly.
To read the story go to: http://www.wattpad.com/story/3091468-la-claire-fontaine