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August 2019 Monthly Wrap-Up

By Brookelorren on 8 Comments

Hello! It’s the last day of August, and it’s time for another monthly wrap-up! This month was pretty good. We started school, so it’s been busy, but I’m getting a lot done. So what happened?

Books Read:

Once again, I finished 15 books in the past month.

  • Start Here – Trish Doller
  • Rivals! Frenemies Who Changed the World – Scott McCormick
  • Isle of Blood and Stone – Makiia Lucier
  • A Court of Wings and Ruin – Sarah J. Maas
  • Crown of Coral and Pearl – Mara Rutherford
  • The Shadowhunter’s Codex – Cassandra Clare and Joshua Lewis
  • The Dream Thieves – Maggie Stiefvater
  • Satellite Bible Atlas – William Schlegel
  • Truthwitch – Susan Dennard
  • Ghost Fire – Wilbur Smith
  • The Lady Rogue – Jenn Bennett
  • The Underground Railroad – Colson Whitehead
  • Blue Lily, Lily Blue – Maggie Stiefvater
  • Rora – James Byron Huggins
  • The Future of Another Timeline – Annalee Newitz

Part of me doesn’t know if Rivals! Should really count, because it’s only available on audiobook, but it reads like a book, so I am.

Blog Stats:

  • Twitter: I lost 14 followers, down to 2081. Oh well.
  • Blog users are slightly up.

You really can’t control how other people are going to react to you, so you just keep plodding along. Nobody likes to see their stats go down, but if I was solely into it for the numbers, I’d just follow everybody and not worry about whether they posted things I was interested in or not.

Writing:

I haven’t focused a lot on The Brightness of Shadow this month. That doesn’t mean I haven’t been writing!

I realized that Rebel‘s pub date was coming up, and I wanted to publish Hero before that time, so I’ve been finishing up edits on that and have been publishing it to AO3. It’s a Legend fanfic that takes place right after the epilogue of Champion, where Day (now going by Daniel) gets some unexpected news when he returns to the Republic. I wrote the first draft before Rebel was announced, so it’s not canon with that book or with Life After Legend I or II (I hadn’t read them yet). I did slide in one little detail I gleaned after reading the Rebel sampler, but it’s mostly independent. I feel a little like Cath from Fangirl wanting to finish Carry On Simon before the last Simon Snow book came out. If you’d like to read it, the first 18 (out of 27) chapters are up on AO3.

Neither me nor my boy won the writing contest, but I got some good feedback, edited it, and sent it out to a couple places. To me, the important thing is that I’m putting my work out there and trying. I finished my first Attic Notebook, so in a little over a month I’ll be able to start reading those stories and maybe I’ll expand upon some of them.

I got an idea for NaNoWriMo this year. So I have two months to work on the characters and do some worldbuilding.

Life:

Looks like we won’t be refinancing the house for a couple of months. We found out at the last minute that we weren’t eligible for the program we were going with (for reasons I don’t want to disclose publicly). We’ll be going for a conventional loan instead, but that’s going to take looking for another lender and won’t happen right away.

My daughter started public school and is doing great! She gets up on her own, and all I have to do is make sure she leaves at the right time. She pretty much does it without my help, but I’m not going to leave that to chance. Her grades are going great.

No trips to the hospital this month! It’s been 2 1/2 months now. We did get a bill for about $59 because my husband rolled a wheelchair for less than 100 yards to take my family member to her room. The $59 was for “mileage”. It’d cost less than $59 to drive a Bugatti 100 yards! It amounts to more than $1000 a mile. It costs about $20,000 to rent a Bugatti for a day, so if I pro-rated that based on the fact that I’d probably drive a rental car more than 20 miles, the mileage on that wheelchair was more expensive.

My boy started school too, and that’s going well. At the homeschool coop, the only thing I’m doing is TAing for an improv class. That should be fun.

In exactly one month and 33 minutes from the time I type this, I get to read Rebel! Yay!

Cat freaking out

Since I’m getting a copy on the Kindle (I ordered a signed hardback too) that means at exactly 10 PM on September 30th, I get to read it. I called it a school holiday so I can stay up all night to read it and go to sleep afterwards. It’s the homeschool coop’s fall break, so lucky me, I can actually pull that one off.

So that’s my August. How was yours? Hope you have a great September.

Why I’m Weird Book Tag

By Brookelorren on 8 Comments

Today I’m doing the Why I’m Weird book tag. I spotted it over at Feed Your Fiction Addiction, but it was started by Dellybird. All you have to do for this tag is name ten weird things about yourself.

“Why I am Weird” Tag rules

  • List ten weird things about yourself, your life or silly habits that you wouldn’t normally share.
  • Tag up to ten people so you can get to know them better.
  • Link back to the person who tagged you & the creator
  • Comment on the posts of people you tagged!

1. I almost never watch television or movies. I probably haven’t watched anything that my husband or kids haven’t dragged me to since the Olympics in Pyeongchang two years ago. I really love the Olympics though. We don’t have cable anymore because we never watch TV, but I do subscribe to live TV for one month every other year to watch the Olympics.

2. I met my husband over the internet. That might not be weird now, but it was pretty much unheard of back in the day. We met before Google was founded. I’m really thankful for the internet, because guys were never really interested in me. I’ve only gone out with one guy that I didn’t meet on the internet.

3. My boy and I have our own language, called the ooo language. There are a few rules and exceptions to it, but I call him “Tanoo” and I’m “Mamoo”. And then you can say “I love ooo”.

4. I love languages in general, and have a lot of flags behind my name in Duolingo. I’m only literate in a few, but I don’t even know how many languages I can say a few things in. I sometimes sprinkle in words from other languages in conversations with my kids. Everyone in my family speaks multiple languages. My boy speaks some Japanese and can count to 59 in Korean.

5. I don’t drink coffee. I tried it once and thought it was disgusting, and didn’t see the point afterwards. I do drink unsweetened tea though.

6. I don’t like most condiments, like ketchup or mustard, either. The same holds true for relish, pickles, and tomatoes (although I’m cool with tomato sauce). Unless it’s a barbecue burger or something like that, I usually get my burgers plain.

7. I’m triggered by doorbells and babies. The doorbell thing stems from a year ago, when we had a police visit due to a family issue. Now unless I’m expecting it, a part of me is afraid they might be stopping by. The baby thing is due to secondary infertility. If I ignore babies, I’m usually okay though.

8. I hate shopping. Unless it’s books. When I do have to buy something, I usually know exactly what I’m looking for and will come home empty-handed if I don’t find it. Even with books, I know exactly what I want.

9. I get anxious talking on the phone. Especially with strangers or people I don’t know very well. The other day I drove a half hour to ask a question in person rather than making a phone call.

10. I get cold really easily. When we were in Arizona last month, I realized that if I had magical powers I’d be a fire mage, because “the heat never bothered me anyway.” Either that, or a water mage, because I love swimming. Maybe a fire/water mage.

So there’s some weird things about me. What about you? What makes you weird? If you’d like to do this tag, I pick you! I guess my reluctance to tag is another thing that makes me weird. I’m always fearful of leaving someone out or annoying someone else. So, if you do this tag, let me know so I can see it!

July 2019 Monthly Wrap-Up

By Brookelorren on 6 Comments

Hello! It’s the last day of July and it’s time to recap what happened! It’s almost August and time for school to start back up soon. But I won’t be working, woo! Well, writing is work but it’s very flexible. This year I’ll have one kid in homeschool and one kid in public school.

Books Read:

I read 15 books this month. Three of them were rereads.

  • Beasts of the Frozen Sun – Jill Criswell
  • Ash Princess – Laura Sebastian
  • Carve the Mark – Veronica Roth (reread)
  • This Is How You Lose the Time War – Max Gladstone and Amal El-Mohtar
  • City of Brass – S.A. Chakraborty
  • Champion – Marie Lu (reread)
  • Jukebox Joyride – Jacob Stein and Jason Rabinowitz
  • Goof-Proof: A Step-by-Step Guide to Writing the Perfect Query Letter – Victoria Loder
  • The Thousandth Floor – Katharine McGee
  • Nottingham – Nathan Makaryk
  • The American Dream? – Shing Yin Khor
  • City of Ashes – Cassandra Clare (reread)
  • Allegedly – Tiffany D. Jackson
  • The Raven Boys – Maggie Stiefvater
  • There’s Something About Sweetie – Sandhya Menon

I finally read one of Maggie Stiefvater’s books! I’ve been talking about how I wanted to read The Raven Boys for months, and there’s a readalong going on, so it was a good incentive to finish.

Blog Stats:

  • Twitter: 2095 followers. Almost at 2100!
  • Blog stats are still pretty steady.

Writing:

I’m so surprised at how much progress I’ve made this month! The first 21 chapters of The Brightness of Shadow are available for beta reading now. I ended up adding two chapters (they’re short) and added another scene that wasn’t originally planned, but should contribute to the overall character arc.

I entered a local contest, and I’m pretty happy with how it turned out. My boy entered the same contest in a different age category. I had the hardest time writing it… I started three different stories but settled on the third one. It was inspired by something that happened to my brother.

Life:

No hospital visits this month! I would say maybe therapy was working, but no. I guess my family member doesn’t like the staff. Whatever keeps this person out, I guess.

So school is going to start back up, and my dd is going to go to public school, and my boy is going to be homeschooled again. We just toured the public school today and dd is hoping to join the swim team there. They have a 3D printer there.

It looks like we’re going to refinance the house soon! This will be good, because we’ll be able to pay off a ton of bills and reduce our interest rate. We’ll free up a ton of money every month and we’ll have enough cash to redo the yard, get a new dishwasher, get new furniture, redo the kitchen counters, and get some electrical work done.

I’m really looking forward to getting a new bed and living room furniture. We used to have a really nice sectional couch, but it was ruined during our house fire ten years ago and we haven’t had anything really nice since. I guess I’ll probably have to share pictures! It might be a month or two still, but the loan guy says it shouldn’t be a problem!

So that’s what happened this month! Hope you had a great July too, and have a wonderful August as well.

June 2019 Monthly Wrap-Up

By Brookelorren on 1 Comment

I almost forgot to write this post. How did I manage that? Anyway, it’s time for the June 2019 monthly wrap-up. Maybe I should put this on my blog schedule next time so I don’t forget.

Books Read:

I read 13 books this month. One of them was a re-read.

  • The Evil Queen – Gena Showalter
  • A Court of Mist and Fury – Sarah J. Maas
  • The Priory of the Orange Tree – Samantha Shannon
  • Spin the Dawn – Elizabeth Lim
  • Killing Patton – Bill O’Reilly
  • A Tyranny of Petticoats – Various
  • Wicked Fox – Kat Cho
  • A Very Large Expanse of Sea – Tahereh Mafi
  • The Storm Crow – Kalyn Josephson
  • City of Bones – Cassandra Clare (reread)
  • On the Come Up – Angie Thomas
  • Dragonslayer – Duncan M. Hamilton
  • Obsidian – Jennifer L Armentrout

Blog Stats:

  • Twitter: 2074 followers. If it’s not going down, it’s good, right?
  • Blog visits are about the same. But I get to read a lot of awesome ARCs, so I guess that’s enough?

Writing:

As of June 1st, I get to write full time! Yay! You may have noticed that I read quite a few books this month. Another benefit to not working for someone else.

The first 7 chapters of The Brightness of Shadow are ready for beta reading. I’m actually happy with them. I’ve been taking a class on Audible called Writing Great Fiction that’s really helping. I even have a vision for changing the first scene of Saving Adelinetta, which is a story I haven’t touched since January. I haven’t been happy with it, but I think I can make it better.

I started a fanfic called The Rift in June, which is another fanfic that takes place right between the events of Wildcard and Legend. I don’t know if anybody will ever be interested in reading it, because all the characters are original characters except for Asher Wing from Warcross (and he’s an old man with a minor role in the story) and the evil elector from Legend (he’s a friend of one of the main characters). I’m pretty much writing this story for myself though, because I wanted to tell the story of a) why Daniel Wing from Legend‘s family was dirt poor even though his ancestor was this big-shot Warcross player and b) why June was named June even though her birthday was July 12th.

I did the Attic Notebook almost every day. Most of my #vss365 posts are inspired by what I write there. I use the #vss365 prompt as my Attic Notebook prompt, and on Tuesdays I combine that with the prompt from this daily writer’s calendar I have.

I’m working on two short stories for a couple of contests I want to enter.

Life:

We had a wonderful day in mid-June and right afterwards, we had to go to the hospital again. It won’t take us long for us to run through our family’s yearly maximum out-of-pocket on this new insurance. Which started at the beginning of this month with dh’s new job.

My dh recently saved his company $200,000 a year. So he’s doing well there.

That’s pretty much all that happened. It was mostly a good month.

Stuff in My Spam Filter

By Brookelorren on 4 Comments

I usually don’t bother to check my spam filter, but I saw another blogger do this so I think I’ll give it a shot. Here are some comments I found in my spam filter:

liquidation tapis montreal posted in my New Release Challenge First Quarter Reviews post:

I like the helpful info you provide in your articles.
I will bookmark your blog and check again here frequently. I am quite certain I will learn many
new stuff right here! Good luck for the next!

Well, I’m glad you liked the helpful info that I provided when I posted a list of new release books I read in the first quarter of this year. Did you read any of these?

bandarq 365 asked on my review of Fawkes (twice, I guess he really needed to know the answer):

Hello there! I know this is kinda off topic but I was wondering if you knew where I could get a
captcha plugin for my comment form? I’m using the same blog platform as yours and I’m having problems
finding one? Thanks a lot!

Well, I’m sure WordPress has a capcha plugin that you can use, but since I don’t use them on my blog, I can’t recommend any. Might I recommend searching for one?

MarylouBig posted on my review of The Legend Trilogy:

Hi. I have checked your brookereviewsnsweeps.com
and i see you’ve got some duplicate content so probably it is the reason that you
don’t rank hi in google. But you can fix this issue fast.
There is a tool that generates content like human, just search in google:
miftolo’s tools

I guess I must be going insane, because otherwise I don’t know how I’d be publishing duplicate content. It’s okay if I don’t rank “hi” on Google. Thanks though! Maybe one of these days I’ll be able to “write like human”. Hopefully I’ll be able to master that skill before I start querying my book (I heard agents prefer books written by people that write like humans to ones that write like robots). Hey, did you know that Russians don’t use articles like “a” or “the” too?

bandarq 365 also wrote on my Fawkes review (I guess he was really excited about this book):

I’m gone to inform my little brother, that he
should also go to see this weblog on regular basis to obtain updated
from hottest news.

Thanks! I hope to see him here soon. I guess you really like ARC reviews and information about new books from my autobuy authors, since that’s pretty much the only hot news I publish around here.

mpl hack version wrote on my Top Ten Tuesday Post about Platonic Relationships in Books:

I’m also commenting to make you understand of the fabulous discovery my friend’s princess obtained visiting yuor web blog. She mastered lots of issues, most notably how it is like to have a great teaching character to have men and women quite simply understand chosen tricky things. You actually did more than people’s expected results. Many thanks for displaying the productive, healthy, edifying and even easy tips on your topic to Mary.

??? This one takes a little bit of unpacking. So your friend has a princess that is visiting my blog. Wow. I didn’t know my little corner of the internet was attracting royalty! Is she Nigerian, by the way?  I’m glad she mastered her issues though.  Not sure who Mary is, unless you’re talking about Mary Ingalls, who I talked about in this post.

cours inspecteur en batiment posted on my January 2019 Monthly Wrap-Up (I guess he’s interested in what was going on in my life six months ago):

Does your website have a contact page? I’m having problems locating it but, I’d
like to shoot you an e-mail. I’ve got some creative ideas for your blog you might be interested
in hearing. Either way, great website and I look forward to seeing it develop
over time.

My contact information is on my Review Policy tab. You’re welcome, although I already have 70 blog posts planned between now and the end of the year (and there will be way more than that), so I actually don’t need any new ideas. But thanks for visiting!

خرید بلیط چارت wrote also wrote on my January 2019 Monthly Wrap-Up (popular post these days):

دریای مرجانی و فوق العاده زیبای Rowley Shoals در استرالیا

لینک عضویت خرید اینترنتی بلیط هواپیما… …

I guess you must have found out that I’m a polyglot. Unfortunately, I don’t speak Persian. Thanks for stopping by though! If you wish to converse with me in a language other than English, might I suggest Spanish, German, or Russian? I speak those the best. In a pinch, you can also use French, Italian, or Portuguese, since I’m pretty decent at reading those too.

So these are some of the posts from my spam filter. Sorry Akismet filtered you out!

May 2019 Monthly Wrap-Up

By Brookelorren on 2 Comments

Hooray! It’s the last day of May! Today’s the last day at my job… 6 hours, 360 minutes (of work, I’m not counting lunch)… but who’s counting, right? Anyway, I’m excited because then I get to work at home again! Part of me is sad because I’ve already had to say goodbye to some of my coworkers, although I’ll probably go out of my way to shop there sometimes when I’m at the library (which is just down the road) so I will see some of them sometimes.

But let’s wrap up May first!

Books Read:

I only finished reading eight books this month. Expect more next month as I’ll have more time to read, and I also have a few unfinished books. But here are the books:

  • Rebel – Beverly Jenkins
  • Storm and Fury – Jennifer L. Armentrout
  • Circe – Madeline Miller
  • The Poppy War – R.F. Kuang
  • The Thirteenth Guardian – K.M. Lewis
  • Alex, Approximately – Jenn Bennett
  • Shadow of the Fox – Julie Kagawa
  • Soul of the Sword – Julie Kagawa

I just realized that these are all new-to-me authors this month.

Blog Stats:

  • Twitter: 2050 followers. Can’t complain here. I didn’t spend as much time playing Twitter games this month as I have been, but I hope to do more next month.
  • Blog visits are about the same too. I have had the chance to visit more blogs, as my Spanish classes have finished, but mostly on Tuesday, because I was still working pretty much every other day.

Writing:

I’m still working on Draft 3 of THE BRIGHTNESS OF SHADOW (which I might rename). I added slightly over 2000 words this month, but that doesn’t really tell you the full picture, because I also replaced more scenes that didn’t fit into the tweaks I’ve been making to the book. Some days that I work on it, the changes are small (like I added a thunderstorm to one scene). I hope to work on this nearly every day starting tomorrow.

I did more Attic Notebook prompts this month too. Attic Notebook is a concept that Laini Taylor started where you write a scene for 15 minutes (I use the #vss365 prompt most of the time) and when you’re done with it, you don’t look at it again… until you fill up the notebook and set it aside for a month or two. Some of the prompts I’ve done might make good stories at a later date.

Life:

I love my new laptop and phone. So that’s good.

This was not a good month for fish. One of our fish got caught in the fish filter, so we went and got two more fish, and another one just got caught in the fish filter. Ugh! We’ve had this fish filter for over a year with no problems until now.

Last day of work today. Happy about that.

Had another hospital trip, but this one was short. Hopefully none in June?

So that was May. It was pretty good, but I’m looking forward to an even better June!

Characters That Remind Me of Myself (Top Ten Tuesday)

By Brookelorren on 40 Comments

Hello friends! Today is Tuesday, so you know what that means! Another episode of Top Ten Tuesday. It’s hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl! Today we’re going to talk about characters that remind me of myself.

Divergent cover

Cara: Divergent – Veronica Roth

When the Divergent movies were coming out, several quizzes went around where you could find out what faction you belonged in. If I had lived in the Divergent world, I probably wouldn’t have any difficulty figuring out what faction I belonged in. It’s always been Erudite. I have the first book in this series in four languages… and even though I’ve only managed to read the first 50 pages or so of Дивергент, I’m pretty sure that only book collectors and the Erudite (or people who are divergent with Erudite traits) do that. And yes, I have the Russian keyboard installed on all my devices and can touch-type on it.

However, I couldn’t have supported Jeanine’s efforts to overthrow Abnegation. I was in the military, so I have a smidgen (maybe) of bravery to me. Like Cara. So that’s why I identify with her.

Legend (Spanish) cover

June Iparis: Legend – Marie Lu

While I don’t have the knack for counting time or the eye for very specific details like June does, I do identify with her in a lot of ways. First, there’s that erudite thing again. I never skipped a grade, but I always found school to be easy. Sometimes I didn’t seem to have a lot in common with many of my classmates. And I did take Tae Kwon Do for several years, so I know how to fight. And we went to the same college (Drake University was modeled on the University of Southern California).

When Dimple Met Rishi cover

Dimple Shah: When Dimple Met Rishi – Sandhya Menon

When I found out that I was going to see Sandhya Menon at a couple of conferences in April, I wanted to read one of her books. When I found out that Dimple was into computer science, I knew what book I was going to read. Just as The Kiss Quotient had me at math, When Dimple Met Rishi had me at computer science (you might be noticing a theme here, LOL).

But it’s not just Dimple’s ability to manipulate code that causes her to remind me of myself. I could definitely identify with her when some boys were mocking her for her looks. While people didn’t overtly mock my looks in front of me (at least not since elementary school, when I remember coming home crying one day because people were making fun of my overbite when I was on the bus), I did have someone write “dog” over my picture in my copy of my eighth grade yearbook.

Kiss Quotient cover

Stella: The Kiss Quotient – Helen Hoang

I did say The Kiss Quotient had me at math, right? I’m not a mathematical genius like Stella is, but we do have several things in common.

Although I didn’t pay for my husband to give me kissing lessons, I did meet him on the Internet. If it wasn’t for the internet, I probably would have ended up marrying my house or something like that. Not because I have any particular attraction to houses or anything, I just don’t think anybody else would have been interested. I never went to prom or anything like that… I felt like such a loser. The only thing I had going for me was my mind.

Stella and I have a few other things in common. Like Stella, I sometimes have difficulty interacting with people. I rehearse conversations in my head. I have to mentally prepare before contacting a stranger on the phone. I may work with the public in my job as a self-checkout host, but I’m almost always saying the same things to people all day long: “the computer got confused,” “you have to be old enough for that,” “thank you,” “have a good evening,” “I could ring up a dead fly if I had to.” When I’m asked to be a cashier I have more difficulty because most of the time I don’t know what to say outside of “did you find everything you were looking for?” and “how are you today?”

Caraval cover

Scarlett: Caraval – Stephanie Garber

I don’t have a sister (and my brother and I weren’t really close as kids) but Scarlett and I do have a lot in common. Scarlett seems to be something of a rule follower who doesn’t take too many risks… and I tend to be on the neutral/lawful good side myself.

Shadow and Bone cover

Alina Starkov: Shadow and Bone – Leigh Bardugo

While I don’t have superpowers, I can see myself as Alina Starkov in a few ways. For one, she had to watch as the love of her life was interested in other people. She also wanted to do the right thing, which didn’t seem particularly clear at one point.

City of Bones Cover

Clary Frey or Tessa Gray: Shadowhunters books – Cassandra Clare

I’m sort of torn between Clary Frey and Tessa Gray in the Shadowhunters universe. They both were something of rule-followers, but they had another, brave side to them that came out when necessary. Tessa really liked to read, but Clary sometimes would go out to the dance clubs with her friend.

They both have a few similar traits to them, so I’ll give them both a tie here.

Ever the Hunted Cover

Britta: Ever the Hunted – Erin Summerill

Britta lost her family, and then she did what she had to do. Life is like that sometimes… you just do what you have to do. She didn’t purposely go out to seek trouble, even though trouble seemed to find her. She also had her lost love that she wasn’t sure if she would ever have the chance to be with.

Fangirl cover

Cath: Fangirl – Rainbow Rowell

One of the reasons why I was such a big fan of Fangirl is that Cath is a lot like me. We both write fanfiction (although Cath has a much larger fanbase than I do). We’re both a little socially awkward. I have to admit though, I did find my way to the cafeteria when I was in college, whereas Cath did not.

Frequency Cover

Fiona: Frequency – Christopher Krovatin

One of the things that resonated with me about Christopher Krovatin’s Frequency was Fiona’s love for music in this book. I thought about majoring in music in college, although I ended up majoring in computer science instead. Fiona also had sympathy for the boy she found beaten up and left on the side of the road, and I hope most of us would have been like that.

So that’s my Top Ten Tuesday and characters that remind me a bit about myself. I can’t wait to see what characters you chose this week… this week seems to be a little more personal than many weeks, so it’ll be good to get to know some of you better.

Next week is a page-to-screen freebie. I think I’m going to do books I’d like to see made into movies. See you then!

April 2019 Monthly Wrap-Up

By Brookelorren on 6 Comments

Woo! April is almost over, and these are exciting times for me. I guess I’ll get started with a wrap-up of what happened this month.

Books Read:

This was a great month for books. I read nine books for the first time and reread another one.

  • Finale – Stephanie Garber
  • No Place Like Here – Christina June
  • When Dimple Met Rishi – Sandhya Menon
  • Kingdom of Ash – Sarah J. Maas
  • Killing Kennedy – Bill O’Reilly
  • The Bear and the Nightingale – Katherine Arden
  • Happily and Madly – Alexis Bass
  • The Tiger at Midnight – Swati Teerdhala
  • Crooked Kingdom – Leigh Bardugo
  • Prodigy – Marie Lu (reread)

Blog Stats:

  • Twitter: 2008 followers. Yay! Hopefully by next month I’ll pass 2019. It’s kinda cool to have the same followers as years that you remember.
  • Blog visits seem to be about the same. Maybe kind of boring, but I seem to hit some sort of magical threshold with publishers and I’ve been getting a lot of “yes” answers when I request ARCs, so it’s cool.

Writing:

I went to two great conferences this month and am working on the third draft to THE BRIGHTNESS OF SHADOW. But at the moment, it’s like when you go to a house that’s under construction and everything looks like a mess? That’s what the third draft currently looks like. I ripped out 10,000 words, changed one scene, and that one scene I changed is going to force me to rewrite like 4 chapters.

But this is okay because when draft 3 is done, it’s going to be a lot better. There have been paragraphs that I’ve been redoing as I have time, and they look so much better. It’s slow, but steady going. I want this to be as good as possible before I start sending it out. I haven’t even gotten around to beta readers yet; hopefully after this draft.

I entered two contests this month. I’ve decided to go with the philosophy of making rejections a game (because every writer gets a bunch of them). So every time I submit something, I’m just going to assume it’s a rejection (although I’m happy with yes too, LOL). I have a spreadsheet with a cool little thermometer. Getting a rejection means your work is getting out there! That is what’s important to me, is trying.

Life:

Yay! I get my new laptop in two days? This one is so slow and while it was nice for something cheap, it’s not what I really want in something I’m going to use for work every day.

I’m also getting a new phone. My iPhone 6s got a cracked screen earlier today. The good news is… with my husband’s new job, we’ll be able to afford an upgrade. It still works, so between now and Sunday, I still have a phone I can use, but I’m getting a new one this weekend.

We did have another trip to the hospital, but such is life. Sometimes you just have to deal with things.

My husband seems to be doing well at his new job, which is good.

So that was April. I’m excited for so many things in May. It’s my last month before I start working at home again! I was approved to read some awesome-sounding ARCs, and since I’ve already read Finale (the only pre-order I have for next month) there are a lot of backlist books I’m going to be able to read!

The 2019 Colorado Teen Literature Conference

By Brookelorren on 4 Comments
Colorado Teen Literature Conference

Saturday I got to go to the Colorado Teen Literature Conference! It was a lot of fun, I learned a lot, and I plan to go back next year (Mackenzi Lee will be speaking). This year, Sandhya Menon and Bill Konigsberg were the speakers.

Ms. Menon gave the first keynote speech, right after breakfast. So, for these things (because I plan on going to more in the future) I have to go out of my comfort zone. I didn’t know anybody there, so I had to ask someone if they’d let me sit with them. Fortunately, they didn’t pull a Forrest Gump and say “Can’t sit here.” Phew. I think the majority of the people there were librarians and teenagers that love books. I met one librarian who was writing a book, and one librarian that works in my library district.

So Ms. Menon’s speech was really good. She spoke about having doubts as a writer. She evidently had to rip apart From Twinkle With Love a few times before coming up with the final product (which, although I haven’t read it yet, I’ve heard a lot of good things about it). Very timely, since I decided to delete several chapters from my book yesterday. She also talked about self-publishing a book and expecting the masses to flock to it and… yeah, that doesn’t really happen all that often. But it did help her get an agent.

Then we went to a couple sessions. There was at least one workshop in each session that were of interest to writers, and I went to them. I first went to “Writing the Real” hosted by Anne Eliot and Ginger Scott, and they talked about how to write about difficult subjects and how to make your books relate to people (just because I’m writing a fantasy book doesn’t mean I don’t touch on real topics). They were great people and even gave me a book.

The second session I went to was “Make Your World Come ALIVE” hosted by Laura Resau (rhymes with see-saw). There, we went through a couple exercises to learn more about our characters (if you didn’t have a book you were working on you could work with pictures that she provided). I learned that Lila (from my book) is a lot like a Mama bear. I should really do those exercises with Alexei (from my book) because I don’t spend a lot of time with him and I really need to get to know him better. It was a great session to work on bringing more sensory descriptions in your work.

After lunch, Bill Konigsberg spoke. I haven’t read any of his books, and I don’t think any of his current books will rise to the top of my TBR any time soon, but he spoke of a book that he’s coming out with in 2020 called The Bridge that I definitely want to read. Two teenagers meet on the George Washington Bridge to commit suicide and then it splits into three timelines. In one timeline, the boy commits suicide. In the second, the girl commits suicide. We see what happens to the survivor and to their families after that. In the third timeline, they both decide to live. Just hearing him describe the book made me want to break out in tears. He spoke about his journey to become an author. Although he wasn’t as good of a speaker as Ms. Menon, it was really interesting.

For the third session, I went to “Building Better Beginnings” with Todd Fahnestock. This is where I decided to delete a few chapters from my book. We went through a few beginnings to books and analyzed how they use character, plot, and setting to capture a reader’s interest. Also, how you get readers to ask questions and reward them with a few answers (but not all of them, at first). Although I now am going to cut out a few chapters, which will mean changing several other chapters to make sure the missing information is eventually put back in, it’s going to be a better book.

The final session was a Q&A session where teenagers asked the two authors various questions. I thought it was quite interesting (and sad) when Ms. Menon said that Target initially didn’t want to carry When Dimple Met Rishi because the photograph on the cover was “too ethnic” or something like that. They offered various advice and insight for the attendees.

I thought the way they did the author signings was genius. Everybody had an animal on their name badges. After the author Q&A, they put a bunch of books on the table where the panel of authors and teens had been sitting. When they drew your animal, you had 30 seconds to go up to the table and pick out two books. Since I’ve spent a lot of time reading people’s book blogs, I had an idea of what sounded interesting. I already had read most of the fantasy books on the table, so I ended up picking up two contemporary books: Always Forever Maybe and Listen to Your Heart. They drew a cat (which just happened to be on my badge) first.

So why I said that the way they did the book signings was genius is because there wasn’t a huge line for getting your books signed. There was actually no line after I picked up my two books, and I was wondering if they were even ready to sign their books. Since I picked up When Dimple Met Rishi last week and read it (my 5 star review will be out in a few hours), I had her book signed. She liked my phone case that I designed myself (in case your wondering, here’s a link to where you can get a personalized dolphin phone case like mine).

It was a great day and I definitely plan on going back next year.

March Monthly Wrap-Up

By Brookelorren on 3 Comments

Can you believe March is already over? It was an amazing month for me, both reading and otherwise. Hope April is just as good!

Books Read:

I read thirteen books for the first time and reread three (okay, so Life after Legend is 22 pages and Life after Legend II is 5 pages so they really shouldn’t count, but Goodreads counts them). So sixteen books total. Many of the were really good. Book in blue are rereads.

  • Sky Without Stars – Jessica Brody and Joanne Rendell
  • The Evertree – Marie Lu
  • The Land of Yesterday – K.A. Reynolds
  • Siege and Storm – Leigh Bardugo
  • Prodigy (Graphic Novel) – Marie Lu
  • Blood Heir – Amélie Wen Zhao
  • A Court of Thorns and Roses – Sarah J. Maas
  • Champion (Graphic Novel) – Marie Lu
  • Ruin and Rising – Leigh Bardugo
  • The Devouring Gray – Christine Lynn Herman
  • Sky in the Deep – Adrienne Young
  • Six of Crows – Leigh Bardugo (audiobook)
  • King of Fools – Amanda Foody
  • Legend – Marie Lu (audiobook)
  • Life After Legend – Marie Lu
  • Life After Legend II – Marie Lu

Blog Stats:

  • I’m at 1984 Twitter followers. I actually have more Twitter followers than the year I was born now.
  • Site visits seem to be steady. I should be able to visit more bloggers in a couple of months (you’ll see why at under the life section).

Writing:

I finished the second draft of THE BRIGHTNESS OF SHADOW. I also learned that the conventional way to write about an unpublished work was to write it in capitals, as opposed to published works, which are in italics. Learn something new every day.

Anyway, I was a little discouraged with the book at this point, and ended up publishing the first four chapters of my latest Legend fanfic, Hero. I don’t know what the convention is for partially published works. Anyway, a couple of days ago I was thinking about my characters and what they wanted, and I came up with an idea that’s going to change quite a bit of the book, but make it better at the same time. I wrote a partial scene to this change and… it’s pretty good.

Life:

Okay… big, glorious change on the life front: my husband got a new job! It’s going to pay about twice as much as his current job. So as of this morning, I only have forty more workdays left at my current job (I plan for my last day to be May 31st). After that, we’ll be able to afford for me to stay at home and be a homeschool teacher and full-time writer/blogger.

I’m staying a couple extra weeks at this job in order to buy a new laptop. The one I have now was inexpensive to begin with, and I never really intended to do so much writing on it. The new laptop I’ll be in the market for will be able to have all my writing applications open at once and shouldn’t slow down while I switch between them.

My daughter seems to be doing… okay. She hasn’t needed to go to the hospital and that’s good. Things are still hard for her, but sometimes life is like that.

So that was it. Hopefully April will be a great month!