sapayne.com

Heya heya!

So here I am in Tucson after way to long on various planes and the fun fun experience of sleeping on London’s floor. I was so busy running around getting ready to leave that I didn’t have time to post I was leaving!

Chapter for Monday is up now, woot! Midweek chapter may or may not be up on time but if it isn’t look for it on Saturday when we’re hopefully home safe.

London’s dog is freakin’ adorable and Tucson is warm and sunny. I keep going OH CACTUS OH PALM TREE and the locals are looking at me funny. BAH

So here we are, safe and mostly packed up ready to go. We’re going to hit Tombstone today for sure so look for you tube vids and photos of it for stuff to inspire you for all that great smutty goodness. Not to mention the announcement of what cool prizes we find there.

=) Today is running around Tucson, getting the apartment packed and the car loaded. Then it’s off to Kon Tiki and to see cactus. CACTUS! Yes I’m a dork.

I’ll be adding stuff to this post as we go so look for it to be updated.

UPDATE 2-20-2008 

Woot! We’re alive! The trip is taking longer than we’d expected. We didn’t get to leave Tucson until LATE MOnday night but we made it to Tombstone mostly sane and in one peice. We found a great motel and got kicked out of a saloon, hung out a local cowboy bar, spent the night and did the tourist thing in the morning. I’ll post the details and vids and photos later but we found Tombstone prizes, can’t entirely remember what they were but they’re bought. I know we picked up playing cards and stuff. Fun touristy stuff!

From there our next big stop was Roswell where the dog attacked and killed an alien and more prizes were gathered. BUmper stickers, magnets and growing aliens abound for this one…

AND we went to White Sands and got to sled on sand dunes, CRAZY FUN!

 We’re in Fort Sumner now and off to the grave of Billy the Kid tomorrow, cross your fingers because the trip is going well but slow and we might not ever make it home! =)

UPDATE 2-24-2008

HOME dear hairy lord we’re finally home! Rolled into town about 3 pm or so local time, got London’s car unloaded and then off to dinner. So here it is now 11:30 pm and I’m finally home and safe and sitting on something that isn’t moving. Ended up taking a faster route because the weather was good and it made up for the late start.

On my to do list: 1) WRITE I’m totally out of story in two of the three so tomorrow and some tonight will be spent catching up and getting that done. 2) POST yes I know, Midweek’s chapter as well as Sat.’s s late. Don’t worry, it’ll go up, might take me a day or so but they’ll go up. None will be skipped. Monday’s is written so no worries there. Monday may be Monday’s chapter and last Midweek, this Midweek might be this Midweek’s chapter and last Sat’s but they’ll all get done and posted. 3) Tell you all about our trip and the cool prizes we found for the contest. We have photos and videos and all that fun stuff but really getting the chapters done and up is the most important. Hang in there and bare with me… contest will be open for a while yet.

Just wanted to let everyone know we’re home alive and safe and mostly, partly, sane… sane is over rated though…

Comment on this post with links to your awesome nifty cool Roadtrip FanWorks entries.

Hello, London here! *waves* So Sarah left her safe, squishy life and has boarded the flight that will bring her a step closer to having a minion on hand. Woot! She’s a bit nervous, so everyone should be lovely and wish her well and reassure her that things wont blow up.

Me, I’m all sorts of impatient and anxious, can’t wait for the plane to just GET HERE so I can pick her up! So I’m attempting to amuse myself by cuddling with my pup and cleaning the apartment. We’ll let ya know when she gets here! (after proper feeding, of course, otherwise she might bite)

~minion

And isn’t that a mouth full! Since I wanted to take you all with me and can’t, I submit this for consideration:

Announcing the SAPayne.com Roadtrip FanWork contest!

In honor of our 14 state road trip, we’re going to be holding a fanworks contest with FABULOUS <cough> PRIZES! We’ve got seven categories you can enter pictures/stories/whatever in, all based on sights we’ll be seeing on the trip. We’re not looking for perfect and amazing, we’re looking for FUN and AMUSING and basically anything that will make us laugh so hard we wet ourselves.

Tiki Bar/Polynesian – Things that incorporate the tiki bar theme/style, whether it’s the boys at a tiki bar, or Trist ends up being a god on Easter Island!

Wild West – Set in the west with Liam facing off against Billy the Kid, or Macy taking a touristy trip to Tombstone, as long as you can smell the dust and horse manure, we’re in business! (oooo spurs…)

Space Dudes – Little green men and UFOs, we want to see what you can do with an ‘out of this world’ theme! Also, bonus prizes for BEST TENTACLE PORN FOMG.

Nature Lovers – With stops at the Smokey Bear Museum and grave, Lincoln National Park and White Sands, we just have to have something for the nature lover. It can be Ichi camping, or Rye as a sprite of the forest, so long as there’s a nature theme, it fits this slot!

Playing With The Big Boys – When you think of all those silly huge muffler men (40’ plus statues outside of garages or gas stations) and the SAPayne.com boys, what pops into your head? Bonus points if you incorporate the random giant stuff across our trip–a big chair, a giant fire hydrant, gargantuan roadrunners made of scrap metal or a huge wine bottle.

Bling*Bling – Anything shiny and bling to correspond to our trip to the Crater of Diamonds (like Andy doing his own rendition of ‘Diamonds are a girls best friend’!)

Arts, Myths and Fantasy – For all the other stuff that we’ll be seeing (but doesn’t fit above), enter this category. We’ll be seeing half-buried cars, a rattlesnake bridge, the Blarney Stone, Route 66, Oklahoma City Bombing Memorial, rocks in naughty shapes, Graceland, a crystal grotto, the Lorraine Motel, and so much more! We’d love to see what you can come up with from our adventures.

Post your entries on your LiveJournal, DevArt, or Y-Gallery accounts—and be sure to share the love and include a link back to SAPayne.com! ^_~ Email your entries to london@sapayne.com and be sure to comment on the ‘SAPayne.com FanWorks Contest’ blog entry with a link to your stuff so everyone can giggle too!

All prizes will be kitsch, touristy items that strike our fancy, direct to you from our pit stops. The contest will run for at least three weeks, but we’ve not set an exact timeframe yet. We’ll give you notice before the contest is officially closed. No limits on how many entries you can make (within reason) and a panel will make the final decisions on who wins.

There will be an ‘entry’ blog post going up on the 16th of Feb (the day before I leave) just for the posting of entries. Please post the category you’re submitting in and the title, if any, of your submission along with the, ya know, entry. Check back to the blog for info on how the trip is going, pictures, maybe video and where we are. Oh, and the prizes as we collect them!

BLAH So doing the bi-yearly artist round up thing and I’ve come to the conclusion that I know no one and I suck. So, if anyone knows anyone that takes commissions, understands yaoi and is affordable… have them email me please! Pretty please?

One week from Road Trip and counting… dear fuzzy lord what have I gotten myself into? You all want to go along with us?

How about a contest! Hmmm CONTEST I SO DECLARE IT!

Yes, we shall have a fanworks contest! WOOT! Check back this week for details but ooo contest with prizes!

London is pestering me to write this because time is running out… ticking down… fading away… and I keep smacking her on the nose with a rolled up newspaper and telling her it’s 3 WEEKS and a week is a lifetime and leave me alone.

It’s the Penn Dutch blood in me, you see, we’re always late. I was even 4 days late being born. Not something I mind so long as I can be late to my own death. Three weeks is forever away and pffffft

So here’s the big announcemen…

London is moving. I know, I know gave ya chills huh?

She is moving to my little small town to be a better minion and so we can be face to face to take over the world with boy smut.  I mean it’s not easy to telecommute a yaoi empire! Trust me we’ve tried… the time zone differences alone are impossible and really how can you build a compound able to stand up to the feds from like 10 states away and if she isn’t here in person who will drink the cool aid?

<ahem>

So yes, London and the Shar Pei with killer gas are moving from Arizona to Pennsylvania. And I said okay, I’ll help you find an apartment and all that crap one day while we were on the phone and I hear her in the background as she’s walking the dog say this:

“Oh no he’s a sweetie, he’s a big ol, baby, really Mr. Strange-Creepy-Guy, he won’t hurt you, it’s okay, and I live alone and right over there and the locks on these apartments are shitty and SURE you can easily break in and rape and murder me and the dog? He’s a sweetheart and will let you!”

Okay, maybe she didn’t ACTUALLY say it that way but she may as well have. And I’m thinking…London on road trip through the south, alone… and had flashes of her becoming some cross country trucker’s bitch in the back of his cab. Don’t laugh, it’s happened.

So what was I supposed to do? I said “Hey…I’ll fly out there and drive back with you.”

Mind you, I’m not agoraphobic or anything but I LIKE staying home. I LIKE not leaving my office. I LIKE not seeing real people. I feel all safe and squishy and happy sitting in my office knowing I can burb and fart and scratch myself without consequences.  But I also like London to not be kidnapped and found in a ditch.

So. February 17th 2008 I am venturing from my cave to fly to Detroit, to Minneapolis, to Tucson. Where London, the dog and I will load up her things in her car and start a road trip home.

We’re going to go to Tombstone, we’re going to go to Roswell, we’re going to go look for Diamonds at the Diamond Crater National Park, we’re going to wing it and stop to see cheesy road side stuff. We are hopefully not going to end up some truckers bitch.

There will be some (maybe) modifications to the posting of chapters but they will go up. We will take pictures and hopefully cause some trouble and hopefully arrive safely home in a few days time.

Cross fingers for us and be very afraid…very afraid!

As I’m sure is already well known, Heath Ledger died the other day. He was 28. When I went to my husband and said ‘guess who’s dead under thirty’ his first guess was Brittany Spears. My first guess would have been someone like Amy Winehouse, who, by the way, entered rehab today. I don’t think any of us could have guessed Heath Ledger.

It’s going to make seeing the new Batman movie more emotional. I’ve heard his performance as the Joker is haunting.

The Joker isn’t why so many of us sighed over him. That popularity had far more to do with cowboy hats and flannel shirts.

I made my husband take me to see Brokeback Mountain. He agreed because he loves me and was one of several very pained looking husbands in the theater. The movie was good, groundbreaking, sexy, romantic and all that it had been whispered about but it also dragged slowly along at points and when we look back now, really didn’t change the movie industry a great deal. Oh sure, fag-gate on Grey’s Anatomy wouldn’t have made such a splash maybe and maybe more people like Neil Patrick Harris would still be firmly in the closet but nothing really has changed. There hasn’t been another Brokeback made since.

I don’t live within the same universe as hollywood. What I saw in our small little corner of the world while waiting for Brokeback to start, was a theater filled with middle aged women. Not teens, not the standard demographic of yaoi fans, not twenty somethings or gay men. 50 + married, white women. In small groups or with sighing husbands.

To me, that’s the legacy of Brokeback and in a way it’s Heath Ledger’s as well. It’s proof that the craving for our brand of romance isn’t a mere three or four years old, lurking out there, namelessly waiting for cowboys to kiss.

As much as we adore pretty boys, none of us wish them to check out while still pretty. Heath Ledger gave us something other actors were too timid to attempt. For that fictionalized slice of reality, and of our own hearts, thank you Mr. Ledger.

Crazy crazy here! So Calendar got finished and printed and done (still have copies about if you want one!) and Heroes & Ghosts got into a really great print job and done (now on amazon! woot!) and believe it or not we got the magazine done and printed. Is it 100% what I would have liked? Naw but what is? I had a gnawing debate about trimming the edges but it really is so much easier to read with them untrimmed and it didn’t cut down the centerfold at all. Both the husband and the minion told me to stop freaking out over a little thing but I just want it to be grand! This isn’t just my baby, it’s a chance to showcase all the wonderful yaoi lover creative sorts out there and I really want to do justice to them!

Which would be stress enough but Embers ended this week too. Did you all know I tend to get all weepy and upset when the last chapter of a story goes up? I always get a touch blue over it… There is more for Liam and Deseem to do but the story has resolved the first levels of conflict and the rest of the stuff that happens needs has a very solid ’same bat time same bat channel’ type feel. It needed to be it’s own book soooo Embers had to come to an end.

That just means… drum roll please… new story! WOOT!

Actually, stories…

Since it’s Friday, I’ll spill.

Saturday chapters are now going to a store called If I Lay Here, the picture below is a teaser of one of the boys. I’d tell you what it’s about but than I’d have to shoot you and we wouldn’t want that now would we? It is modern set…

Monday’s we’ll be revisiting our dear swordsman friend Tarin Morris because I want to play with his messed up pretty head some more. I will give a warning, it will be a slow build to smexy m/m goodness but the fun angst tragedy level will be high. This is the second of the three parts of his tale so I highly doubt it will be as long as say Embers was but ooo Tarin’s going to meet his match!

Midweek will stay the chapter for Is Yet… I want to take it to twice a week but Tarin has been such a good boy waiting now for so long! It might get moved to Mondays but it’ll stay at once a week until the second third of Tarin’s story is told.

What’s in the works? Ah, bounty hunters, elves, vampires, Englishmen, demons, saints, accountants and maybe a few demigods… maybe… LOL <ahem>

OH and All Souls Pass is aimed to be the next in print and Yaoi Magazine Issue 2 is aimed for April!

I’m starting to think the Weather Girls were right… it does seem to be raining men here!

WOOT, okay I fall down dead now okay?

Oh way back like two…two and a half years ago… there was a running joke that one day <shakes a fist at the sky> ONE DAY… we’d have a magazine and we’d bring yaoi goodness to everyone and it would be a format to let other people share their m/m smexiness with the WORLD…

But we would always sober up and come to our senses.

Until now… when we, ya know, actually did it.

84 pages of yaoi happiness… 4 original stories, a centerfold of Deseem, 2 manga and original articles… and ah…stuff… my mind has fallen and can’t get up…

So go see for yourself…

http://www.yaoimagazine.com/

If you can’t get a copy… spread the word…or submit something…but take part in the yaoi revolution and help TAKE OVER THE WORLD! <insert evil laughter here>

The other day, Sir Edmond Hillary died. I went to the husband and said oh guess what and his response was…. who’s Edmond Hillary? The minion had the same response. Le Sigh. If you don’t know, go google him and learn something why don’t ya!

Anyway… it was the man’s humility that always impressed me. It was how he could face these huge risks and challenges and still be so humble.

Some of you know, my husband and I have a couple of irons in the fire. Well, one of them has gotten bigger and we’ve been presented with what will be a huge risk or a huge shiny opportunity. I am fairly sure we’re taking it but goodness, it scares me.

We were given this chance on the day Edmond Hillary died. A man that took great chances and risked life and limb and all I’m risking is humiliation and financial ruin. Seems paltry in comparison but I’m a wimp. WIMP WIMP WIMP WIMP

Wish me luck lol

On a happier note…

I’ve uploaded a sample from the sketch I have from Rah of one of the new boys… I will take ahh the first 10 questions posted about it! One question per post pleasssse to be fair =)

Annnd yes stories plural because I’m crazy and nutty and stupid. <stuffs her favorite swordsmen for hire behind the door> YOU DIDN’T SEE THAT DID YOU??