Did everyone see Transformers? Gods I LOVE Transformers. I have an uncontrollable urge to throw myself at Optimus Prime. Of course that would probably only result in me cracking my skull on his ankle, but still. I love it. I grew up with Transformers comics (they didn't air the cartoon much in China at the time so I only had books). I loved the new movie so much I went out and bought the DVD of the first one and re-watched that. Mmmm... robots.

So anyway, before this movie came out, I had this whole different plot in mind, centered around Elita-One, Optimus Prime's girl (I think she was only in one episode of the TV show and a few comic stories). I had a whole plot built out. She would arrive on Earth, seek out the autobots, and as they come to welcome her, she popps out of her car form (I imagine her as a dark pink and grey armored Corvette) and takes a swipe at Optimus, then runs off as the other autobots try to restrain her. Then lots of stuff happens -- she runs into Mikaela by chance who "adopts" her like Sam adopted Bumblebee, thinking she's just another autobot; the other autobots gather and discuss who the new arrival might be; she shows up again with Mikaela in two, shuts down the communications of NEST and sends a message to the humans: "I AM ELITA ONE. MY MISSION IS TO KILL OPTIMUS PRIME. YOU HAVE 24 HOURS TO SEND HIM OUT BEFORE I KILL THE HUMAN." Chaos ensues, and at one point Optimus takes off after her as she tries to lead him into a trap, ramming the autobots who try to stop him out of the way until Sam and Bumblebee finally get in his way and cool him down. The autobots tell the story of Elita to the humans, how she gave her life to save Optimus during the civil war and must have been revived by the Decepticons to be used as an assassin. Optimus can't bring himself to fight her but she's sleek and dangerous and ruthless and so on and so forth. Etc etc. Meanwhile Mikaela and Elita develop a bond which eventually helps bring her around and recover her memory at the last second to be reunited with Optimus.

And the movie, of course, wasn't even close to that. So now I sit here feeling the old call of the fanfiction-verse. It's like a muscle that's been out of use for a long time aching to be stretched again. I hear Michael Bay isn't planning another Transformers movie, which makes me think "WHAT??? WHAT ABOUT ELITA???"

To write or not to write, that is the question. So much for retirement.

Thinking about publishing my books on Kindle. In case you didn't know, Kindle is that new electronic-book thing they've come out with. You can download books on it and read it right on there. I haven't read all the details but from what I can tell it's very easy to publish on there. It'd be a way to get some exposure since it's hard to convince people to read a blog novel. But some concerns I have are:

1) it would sit on there and get no attention anyway
2) if by some miracle I do get an agent's attetion in the future, they'll use it as an excuse not to represent me because I've already been "published"

But I may do it despites these concerns since I feel a bit pathetic to be currently working on my fifth book and haven't published one.