I will shamelessly admit that I purchased Nelly Furtado’s Whoa Nelly! a few years ago, mostly on the strength of the “Party’s Just Begun” song that was also included on the soundtrack to Brokedown Palace (I never saw the movie, but the soundtrack rocks!).
Recently on the radio, I’ve been hearing this really irritating country-tinged song, so I finally made myself listen to figure out who I hated so badly. After spending 5 minutes deciphering whiny, nasal lyrics drowned by whiny, nasal violins, I managed to puzzle out the words “powerless” and “things you do” – Google did the rest. To my disappointment, it was Nelly Furtado.
So, Nelly Furtado, “Powerless” is crap* – if that’s the typical tone of your new album, there’s no way in hell I’d even bother to download it.
(* “Crap” describes my personal opinion. Objectively it’s just a song, but to my ears it’s painful. YMMV.)
Okay, it’s an hour later than I really intended to have it posted.
BUT!
It’s up. Alice can be officially considered my first novel. It finished up at roughly 51,849 words, which is something like 205 pages of doublespaced Courier 12pt. That makes it a small novel.;-)
It’s also a first – the story idea came to me over a year ago and I wrote the first two thousand words and stopped. For some reason at the end of October I felt compelled to write, and wrote feverishly through November 17; I spent the next two weeks editing. The semi-finished product you see now.
The state of the story is basically a “second draft” – I’ve completed basic editing, grammar, and spellchecking, as well as cleaning up any obvious plot holes I came across. That said, I’m so close to the damn thing that I will require some time and then I’ll go back and make one more edit for the true “final.”
The story – well, check it out for yourself. It’s loosely inspired by Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, but you might say that is very loosely. The story has a bit of a fantasy feel overall, so would probably fall into that genre.
Feel free to let me know what you think. You can email comments directly to alice@natesimpson.com – all praise/feedback/flaming welcome (spammers, I will see you burn in hell). 
Enjoy!
