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Book Settings I’d Like To Visit

By Brookelorren on October 16, 2018October 16, 201834 Comments

It’s Tuesday again, and today’s Top Ten Tuesday Topic is “Bookstores/Libraries I’ve Always Wanted to Visit”. I’ve chosen to do “Book Settings I’d Like to Visit” instead. In case you’re wondering, the bookstores/libraries I’d like to visit include Powell’s Books in Portland (been there but it’s awesome), the National Archives, Library of Congress, and the Vatican library. But back to ten bookish settings:

There are a lot of bookish settings that would absolutely be terrible to visit because they’re always at war or something. But not all of them would be that bad.

The Shire: Who wouldn’t want to visit the Shire? I wouldn’t want to go at some periods of it’s history, but overall, it seems like a nice place. If it looks anything like the movies, it would be gorgeous. I guess the next best thing would be to go to New Zealand. But I’ve never been there either.

Narnia: Narnia would be a lovely place to visit. As long as you went at the right time. I mean, who would want to visit while the White Witch was still reigning and there was an eternal winter (with no Christmas)? It would be cool to see the talking animals and the mythical creatures.

Heaven: The Bible has a lot of places that would be pretty cool to visit. The Garden of Eden would be interesting to see (before that whole fruit thing happened, of course). I probably wouldn’t want to stay very long in any one place, because I probably wouldn’t really like their idea of sanitation, but Heaven would be a pretty cool place to stay for a very long time. We’re supposed to be happy there forever, right?

Tokyo of Warcross: I think it would be pretty cool to visit the Tokyo of Warcross. It would probably be a pretty fun game to play. The virtual overlays over everything would be cool to see as well. I’m not sure that the whole social scoring would be too good in real life (they’re already doing that in China) but other aspects of the game and its leakage into reality would be fun.

The Prairie of Little House: I guess there’s something of a theme in a lot of places I’d like to visit. Imagine the peace and quiet where you could read all of those books! But it would be lovely to visit some of those old-timey places where there weren’t a lot of people around and it was just you and nature.

Prince Edward Island of Anne of Green Gables time: here’s another one of those old-timey places that would be quiet and fun to visit for a bit. I bet it would get pretty cold in the winter though, since it’s so far up north. Maybe I’d only want to visit in the summer. Or I’d want to have extra warm clothes to wear. I get cold pretty easily.

Feudal Japan of Flame in the Mist: We’re going to assume that if I go to visit this place, I’m not going to be a peasant, because that would be no fun at all. But the magical forests and the like would probably be quite beautiful.

Krynn of Dragonlance: While I wouldn’t want to visit Krynn during one of their numerous wars, there were periods of peace in the land’s history (I think). It would be pretty fun to study to be a mage. I imagine they’d have to be Erudite like me, since they always have to read books.

Ireland, of The Wren Hunt: This was a last-minute edition to this post, because I just read it last week. The Wren Hunt is set in modern-day Ireland. Not in a big city or anything, but in a small village. Although the book doesn’t do a lot to describe the surroundings, I’ve seen pictures of Ireland before and I know it’s a beautiful place. So, I’d probably love to visit the setting of this book.

Pacific Crest Trail of Wild: At this point, I’ve gone through my entire read list on Goodreads (there’s a lot of books that I’ve read that aren’t on Goodreads that I don’t remember though) and I still have to come up with one other place. I’d love to visit the Pacific Crest Trail though, which is in the book Wild. I love hiking, and think that this would be a fun thing to do. I’d need new shoes though. Since I walk all day at work, I go through shoes fairly quickly, and am in need of a new pair. Especially if I plan on going on a massive hike like this.

So that’s today’s list. Come back next week when I talk about villains!

The Wren Hunt Sings

By Brookelorren on October 15, 20183 Comments

I recently read The Wren Hunt by Mary Watson (thank you to Netgalley and Bloomsbury YA for an Advanced Review Copy in exchange for an honest review). It is a magical book in a fairly unique setting that made me want to keep reading.

The Wren Hunt is set in modern-day Ireland. The story starts out with some excitement: every year after Christmas, some boys chase Wren (our heroine) until they catch her, and demand some sort of trinket for her. Wren doesn’t find this chase amusing, but for some reason, they continue to bully her year after year.

Soon, we find out that the boys that chase her are part of a group of people that her family has been feuding with for generations. Like in Romeo and Juliet or The Weight of Feathers, Wren’s family is part of the augurs, and the boys that bully her are the judges. Both judges and augurs have a sort of druidic magic to them. Wren’s gift allows her to have visions of the future, although sometimes it is difficult to interpret what they mean.

The augur’s magic appears to be fading, and they blame the judges for it. Wren is sent to take an internship at a business run by the judges, in order to spy on them. The judges there don’t know that she’s an augur, and if she is found out, it wouldn’t do well for her.

Over the course of this book, she falls in love, finds out some shocking truths about herself, and has to make difficult decisions about her life. There’s betrayal, and twists, and things aren’t always exactly as they seem. It all makes for a great story.

Setting

I love how Ireland was used as the setting for this book. It makes an excellent backdrop for the druidic magic. The Wren Hunt transports you to a small village in this country. The town has this small-town feel of a place that kids grow up in and don’t really escape from. It’s unlike a lot of fantasy book settings, which made it interesting.

Characters

I really liked the characters and relationships portrayed in this book as well. Although she lost her parents when she was young, Wren is close to the family members she lives with, as well as her childhood friend. In this book, Wren is growing apart from her family, and I love how Ms. Watson tackles this. There are also enemies, a growing but sometimes awkward attraction to a boy, and coworkers.

Overall

Will The Wren Hunt make my list of Top Ten Books I Read in 2018? No, but I’ve read a lot of books this year, and a lot of good books aren’t going to make it onto the list. This book is a unique book that kept my attention from the beginning until the end. I definitely recommend it.

The Wren Hunt won’t be available until November 6th, but you can pre-order it now.

MORE Amazing Marie Lu News!

By Brookelorren on October 13, 2018October 13, 20182 Comments

It seems like every time I get major Marie Lu news that I can’t wait to share with everybody, I’m at work. I spend my 15 minute breaks on Twitter; that’s when I see them. I knew Marie Lu had some news to share with us either this week or next, but I couldn’t imagine that she was going to write a FOURTH book to Legend! I’m so excited!

Oh, and it’s supposed to come out NEXT FALL! I was a little disappointed last month when Ms. Lu said that Kingdom of Back wouldn’t be coming out until 2020. Goodreads had been saying it was a 2019 release, so I figured I had over a year to wait for a new book from her. This might be why there was the delay. I do have some short stories to read (I plan on reviewing the Slasher Girls and Monster Boys anthology later this month, which has a story by her in it), but we get a whole new book next year. Yay!

Oh, and that’s not the ONLY good news today! She will have another book called Skyhunter coming out! It looks like Skyhunter is going to be a duology.

There is an article about the deal in the Washington Post.

So this last 30 days has been an AMAZING reading month for me. Not only have I read some of the best books this year (Wildcard, Enchantée, Muse of Nightmares, more Mortal Instruments books), I get this news. When I read this on my last break, I practically floated through the last hour of work! And of course whenever anybody asked how I was, I told them “outstanding!” or some other thesaurus variant of the word. If they asked why I was doing so well, I told them about the book, LOL.

Have a wonderful day!

Ever the Brave Was Beautiful

By Brookelorren on October 12, 2018October 11, 2018Leave a Comment

I first heard about Ever the Brave when I kept seeing that Once a King was going to come out this fall. The story sounded really interesting, so I just had to get the books from my library. I read Ever the Hunted in July (you can read my review here), but I had to wait a lot longer in order to read the second book in the series. This book was worth the wait.

Since this book is the second in a series, it may contain spoilers for the first book.

Britta might have gotten herself out of immediate danger in Ever the Hunted, but her life has not gone back to normal. She now has this mysterious bond with King Aodren, and on top of that, he now seems to have the same kind of mysterious connection to her that she used to have with Cohen. Of course, she’s in love with Cohen, which makes the situation even messier. To make things worse, the king seems to be developing feelings for Britta.

The danger in Britta and Cohen’s life hasn’t gone away, either. The Spiriter that was controlling Aodren is now wreaking havoc in the kingdoms of Malam and Shaerden, threatening to destroy the fragile peace between the two countries. Cohen has to track down this Spiriter, which is causing strain in his relationship to Britta.

Britta eventually discovers that she has to choose between Cohen, who sometimes is a little overprotective of her, and Aodren, who continues to shower her with gifts.

Choice seems to be a pretty big theme in Ever the Brave. Cohen has to learn that even though he wants to protect his love from all of the dangers of this world, he can’t make that decision for her if he doesn’t want her to feel smothered. He also feels like he needs to give Britta the freedom to choose between her and Aodren, even if it means that she might not choose him. I thought it was sweet that he cared enough for her to want her to make that decision, even if it potentially could hurt him in the end.

I loved the ending of Ever the Brave and am looking forward to reading Once a King at some point, even though Britta and Cohen won’t be main characters in that story. This is a sweet story with a beautiful ending. I highly recommend it.

Evenfall Fell Short

By Brookelorren on October 11, 20184 Comments

I was recently given the opportunity to read Evenfall by Gaja and Boris Kos (thank you Netgalley for the ARC). While I thought the concept of the book was good, it sadly did not live up to expectations. Evenfall did have to follow some of the most amazing books I read this year; even still, it was just okay.

After I was about 25% of the way through the book and I still wasn’t feeling this book, I tried to figure out why this book just didn’t mesh with me. I think the biggest problem was that there was a lot of infodumping. Ember, our heroine, was confused and was trying to figure out what was going on. Her new friend Ada was trying to help her understand, but there was a lot of explanation and not much action. For a lot of the book, there wasn’t a lot of dialogue either. There were descriptions of them eating breakfast, traveling to Ada’s house, and a little bit of hiding, but there wasn’t a lot going on.

The action did pick up some in the second half, when Ember’s interactions with the “bad guy”, the Crescent Prince, pick up in earnest. The last 20% of the book was actually fairly good. Still, I thought there was a love interest that sparked a little too quickly in the last bit (Ember and another person declared their love to each other after knowing each other for probably less than a week).

Despite all of the explaining that was going on, there were times when the character seemed to know things that she shouldn’t have. I hope that these are fixed before the finished product comes out, but there were two occasions where Ember names a character they were going to meet when we hadn’t been introduced to them previously.

On a positive note, the magic systems and the storyline were interesting and complex. I started to feel like I was getting to know Ember by the end of the book. I could also feel for her and the fact that she didn’t want to be used as somebody else’s pawn. There were a lot of interesting aspects to the world here.

Considering that the action did pick up towards the end of the book, I might think about reading the sequel. It’s not something I’d put at the top of my TBR, but there is a part of me that wants to see this world put back together.

Really Long Books That I’ve Read

By Brookelorren on October 9, 2018October 8, 201830 Comments

Time for another Top Ten Tuesday! Today’s Topic is “Longest Books I’ve Ever Read” but how does one figure that one out? I’ve read some really long books in my life. Since I can’t pinpoint the longest books I’ve read in my lifetime, I guess you’ll have to settle about reading about some of the really long books that I’ve read. They’re all over 800 pages long!

A lot of these are history books because they can be really long.

The Bible might be the longest book that most of us ever read. Maybe. I’m guessing that the majority of people around today have never actually read the Bible from cover to cover. I try to every year, but I’m failing miserably this year. I have different editions that I read (one year I read it in Spanish for a challenge and to improve my Spanish language skills). The American Patriot’s Bible is 1568 pages and contains a lot of interesting facts about the founding of the United States.

A History of Modern Europe – at 1515 pages, this is a really long book! It’s definitely not something that you’re going to read over the weekend. It was really good though. A lot of history that I’ve read over the years either deals with world history or American history. This one focuses solely on Europe, which has had plenty of its own problems!

Atlas Shrugged might very well be the longest fictional book that I read. This edition is 1188 pages! It is not an easy read, either. This particular book took me months to read. I wasn’t blogging about books at the time, but even if I were to reread this book today, I think it would take me a while to get through. The writing is not easy.

I’m sure that there will be a lot of George R.R. Martin books on Top Ten Tuesday posts this week. The edition of A Dance with Dragons that I read was 1125 pages! No wonder they took me so long to read! I read the five books that were published while I was at work last year; I was reading this series on my lunch break for months!

The edition of A Storm of Swords that I read was 973 pages. Even though these books are long, they were a lot easier to read than Atlas Shrugged. They’re still long enough that I don’t plan on reading them again until the last book comes out. Well, maybe if Winds of Winter comes out ten years from now, I might reread the series before that, but if it’s out in another two or three years (LOL) then I’ll probably wait on the reread.

A Patriot’s History of the United States is another very long book, with 960 pages to it. This one focuses on the history of the United States, from its discovery by the Europeans to fairly recently. Although long, it was well-written and easy to read.

The History of the Ancient World is 896 pages. Susan Wise Bauer’s writing is interesting and easy to read. Even though this book took me a little while to get through, it didn’t take me months like some of the more difficult books on this list did.

From Dawn to Decadence is 895 pages (at least the original hardback edition that I read was) and took me a very long time to read. It’s not an easy read by any stretch of the imagination. I had aspartame poisoning the first time I tried reading it, which made it difficult for me to remember details of the book as I read it. Years later, I tried reading it again, and I was able to finish it. I read it right around the time that the author died (he was really old at the time).

The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire is a long book, even in the abridged version, which is what I read a long time ago. This Penguin Classic edition was 848 pages. It took me months to read this. Someday, I hope to read the unabridged version of this book, but that’s 3,674 pages — and it’s not easy reading, either! That will probably be the longest book that I’ll ever read.

The Creators by Daniel J. Boorstin is 832 pages long. I didn’t enjoy this book as much as I did The Discoverers, but this was a good book. For a book this long, it didn’t take too much time for me to finish. Looking this book up on Goodreads, I discovered that there’s yet another book in this series — The Seekers — that I had never heard of before. I had to add that to my TBR, because these books are amazing.

So there you have it: ten über long books that I’ve read. I have some really long books on my TBR, but most of them (with the exception of Kingdom of Ash) are not quite as long as these!

Next week I will probably write about settings in books that I’d like to visit. The topic is on bookstores and libraries I’d like to visit, but since I can only think of three of those, I’ll be switching up the topic a bit.

Muse of Nightmares is a Dream

By Brookelorren on October 7, 2018Leave a Comment

Muse of Nightmares was released last Tuesday, and if you haven’t read it yet, you should definitely put it on your TBR. It’s getting to be that time of year where I start thinking about what the best books of the year were, and there’s a good chance that this book is going to make the Top Ten Books I Read for the First Time in 2018 list.

Because this review is the second in a duology, there may be spoilers for the first book.

This book begins where Strange the Dreamer left off. Lazlo discovered that he was godspawn, Sarai was dead, and Minya was trying to get Lazlo to do her bidding to allow her to go down to Weep and let her get her revenge on the humans. What a mess! Of course, Lazlo is this gentle soul who wouldn’t hurt a fly. What is a poor boy who loves his Sarai to do?

In addition to the difficult situation the godspawn were left in, we were left with questions. Where did all the other babies go? Why did Lazlo suddenly turn into godspawn when for twenty years he was just an ordinary boy? What does the bird flying around have to do with anything (and why is the bird on the cover of this book? All of that will be answered in Muse of Nightmares.

I don’t want to give too much away, but Lazlo and Sarai’s relationship continues, the humans down in Weep finally meet the godspawn, and secrets are revealed about the universe that I certainly didn’t expect. The characters that we loved in the first book are back, and most of them grow and become better people.

Just like Strange, Muse is a beautiful book with gorgeous prose. Laini Taylor has such a lovely way of writing. The alluring words made me want to keep reading. The world that she built is imaginative, and the way that she writes it makes it vivid. You grow to love the characters and empathize with them.

Another thing that I loved about reading this book was that it has such a beautiful message to it. Minya wants revenge for what happened to her. The humans who were exploited have reason to hate the godspawn. Another character that we will meet when we read this book has another reason to hate. One of my favorite lines in this book is repeated twice: Let all the ugliness end here.

It’s such a timely message. Let all the ugliness end here. If we could get one thing from reading this book, that would be it. Wouldn’t the world be such a better place if we could all just listen to each other? To try to understand where other people are coming from? There would be so much less anger floating in the air if we could just get that. Just like the humans, godspawn, and the new character we meet in Strange the Dreamer and Muse of Nightmares, almost all of us are trying to do the right thing. Sometimes the right thing is not easy to discern. Maybe if we were all a little more like Lazlo and Sarai, our hearts would heal.

The ugliness does end, at least for the characters here. I won’t say what happens, but I was in tears for the last 50 pages of the book or so, it was so beautiful. The ugliness even ends for some of the characters that you might not even think could change. Not everyone gets a happy ever after, and not everybody’s soul can mend, but the end was perfect.

Or was it? This book opens itself up to fanfiction or further books in the series. Maybe we’ll see some more novellas from here. That would be nice.

Everless was Endearing

By Brookelorren on October 4, 2018September 10, 20186 Comments

I recently read Everless by Sara Holland. Driving my daughter to school takes quite a lot of time, which I can use to listen to audiobooks. This one came available at my library recently.

Jules lives in a humble village with her papa. They barely are able to make ends meet — then again, that’s true of most people in the village. Once again, the rent is due, and they don’t have the money to pay for it.

Everyone in Sempera uses time as a currency. If you can’t pay the rent, then you can take it out of the time you have remaining in your life. Most of the poorer people have shortened lives as a result. In a place like Everless, where the wealthy people live, some people can live for hundreds of years.

Jules used to live in Everless, as a child. A tragedy forced them to flee years ago, however. Now that Jules is 17, she can help Papa pay the rent by using her own time. Papa forbids it, but if he uses some of his time, he might die. In an attempt to save Papa’s life, Jules decides to go back to Everless, where well-paid jobs as servants await, preparing for the wedding of Roan Gerling and the queen’s adopted daughter.

Roan and Jules used to be friends as children. Going back to Everless means that she will see Roan again, although he will be marrying someone else. It also means that she will see his nasty brother, Liam. Everless is not a very safe place to be, and Jules believes that part of that reason is Liam.

As the story progresses, we find out why Everless is such a dangerous place, and we find that there are long-buried secrets held there. We find out that things aren’t exactly as they seem, and the past may come back to haunt everybody.

I enjoyed this book. The imagery was wonderful. I started getting my suspicions about some of the plot points partway through the story, although there were still some surprises, even at the very end. When I was getting towards the end of the story, I would want to sit in my car a little longer, just to find out what was going to happen next.

I’m looking forward to finding out what happens in Evermore, which should be coming out on December 31st. Which is weird, because most book releases come out on Tuesdays and December 31st is a Monday, but who knows? More than likely I’ll read it sometime next year.

Authors I’d Love to Meet (Top Ten Tuesday)

By Brookelorren on October 2, 2018October 1, 201830 Comments

Hooray for another Top Ten Tuesday! Today we’re going to talk about Authors that I’d Love to Meet. For this question, I’m not necessarily going to talk about authors that I’d like to wait in line at a bookstore to get an autograph from… because that would basically include any author whose books I like.

Today’s list includes authors that I’d like to hang out with for the day. Maybe go to their house, have over for dinner (assuming that I wasn’t cooking and there’d be maid service involved) or just chill. I’m also assuming that I wouldn’t be a blithering idiot when hanging out with them and we could just hang out like normal people (that’s a big assumption, but let’s say a little magic is involved for that. It’s not like any of these fantasy scenarios are going to happen in the first place).

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. Thank you once again!

1. Marie Lu

Is this one really a surprise? It probably shouldn’t be if you’ve read this blog for a while. I’m not exactly sure I’d want her to know how much fanfiction I’ve written based on her books because that might be embarrassing though. We went to the same college, so I guess there’s a couple minutes of conversation that we could have, LOL. Ms. Lu seems like a really nice person who cares about people. At least that’s how she comes across in her books and tweets.

2. Veronica Roth

I had to also include my other auto-buy author, Veronica Roth. Her book that’s expected to be released in 2020 was the first 2020 book on my TBR. I love everything that she’s written so far, even the short story that she’s written that made it into Summer Days and Summer Nights. Okay, not chapter 50 of Allegiant, but I try not to think of that one. Ms. Roth doesn’t post a lot to Twitter, so I don’t really know if we’d have much to talk about other than her books, but I suppose I could ask her about how she likes Chicago.

3. Cassandra Clare

I’ve been reading a lot of The Mortal Instruments lately, and I think they’re really good, but that’s not the main reason why I’d want to meet her. I’d love for her to show me her library! She posted a picture of her workspace on Twitter once and it was only part of her library, and it was gorgeous! Plus, her bio says that she’s travelled a lot. She also got her start by writing fanfiction, so it would be cool to talk to her about that. Plus… maybe I could ask her if she’d convince her publisher to release R-rated versions of some of her books ;-). I know she writes those extra scenes and posts them on Tumblr.

4. Alice Reeds

Alice Reeds isn’t well-known, but she’s the author of Echoes, which I reviewed earlier this year. Why would I want to meet her? She lived in Germany for a long time. She speaks both German and Russian, and so do I. I think that she would be really interesting to talk to.

5. Paper Fury

So if I met her today I’d have to apologize for not reading her book yet, but I did buy it! She seems so nice on her blog and on Twitter, plus I’m pretty sure she lives in Australia. I love Australia! I spent five weeks there on an exchange with the Australian military, and it was awesome. I got to see quite a few cities on the East coast, from Canberra to Cairns. So I think she’d be fascinating to meet.

6. Sabaa Tahir

Not only do I love her Ember in the Ashes books, but she seems like a really nice person on Twitter (if you’ve liked or responded to one of my tweets, your chances of getting on today’s list go up drastically). After A Reaper at the Gates came out, she stayed at a few hotels that were haunted. I’d have to ask her if she’s stayed at any haunted hotels recently!

7. Astrid Scholte

I haven’t read her book, Four Dead Queens, that is supposed to come out next year (although I’d love an ARC), but she seems like a really nice person on Twitter. We could probably talk about our favorite books, and I could ask her about what it’s like to get her first book published, because why not? I’d love to do that someday.

8. Laura E. Weymouth

While I haven’t read her book The Light Between Worlds (it isn’t even out yet), she seems like a really nice person that I’d like to meet; we’ve tweeted back and forth a few times. Plus, she lives on a big farm or something that would probably be pretty cool to visit.

9. Laini Taylor

Strange the Dreamer is a wonderful book and I’m looking forward to Muse of Nightmares as well (out today!). She also seems to be fairly intelligent when it comes to politics, although I’m sure there’s a lot that we wouldn’t agree on. But what’s the fun with talking to an echo chamber?

10. Kiersten White

Here’s another author whose books I haven’t read yet (although I did buy a couple of her books, LOL) but I’d like to meet her. She’s very encouraging on Twitter. I don’t know a whole lot about her other than that, but if she came over to my house for dinner, we could talk books!

So that’s this week’s Top Ten Tuesday. What authors would you like to meet? Would you like to hang out with them and pick their brains, or do you think that meeting them while they sign your books is intimidating enough? Leave a link to your TTT and I’ll visit back!

Next week, I’m posting some of the longest books I’ve ever read! I don’t know if it’s the very longest books I’ve ever read, but I did find ten books that I read ranging from over 800 to more than 1500 pages long. I’m glad not all books are that long!

September 2018 Wrap-Up

By Brookelorren on September 30, 20188 Comments

It’s already the end of September! That means that… in only a few hours… NaNoWriMo will only be a month away! Eeek! I’m actually pretty excited to start writing, but I’m a little scared all at the same time. I’ve never written a novel before that wasn’t fanfiction. But then again, I’ve been writing a lot of things this year that, even though they are in a pre-built universe, are original elements, like kidnapping and accidents and things like that. I’ve also created original characters. So maybe I’ll succeed this year.

Books Read:

This month I read thirteen books. Two of them were audiobooks, and one of them was a reread.

Queen of Shadows – Sarah J. Maas
The Wolf and the Rain – Tanya Lee
Everless – Sara Holland
Ever the Brave – Erin Summerill
Frequency – Christopher Krovatin
War Storm – Victoria Aveyard
Warcross – Marie Lu (reread)
Wildcard – Marie Lu
City of Fallen Angels – Cassandra Clare
Addicted to Outrage – Glenn Beck
Daughter of the Pirate King – Tricia Levenseller
Legendary – Stephanie Garber
Enchantée – Gita Trelease

My favorite books of the month were Wildcard and Enchantée. I’m pretty sure that both books will end up near the top of my annual Best Books I Read for the First Time in 20XX list, that I put out every January 1st.

Blog Stats:

Twitter has been doing really well. I regained a lot of the followers that I lost last month, and am not at over 1575 followers.
My monthly blog users went down, but that’s okay. I haven’t had as much time to visit other people’s blogs.
I have eight scheduled posts at the moment. I need to write a couple more reviews tonight, and probably another Top Ten Tuesday.

Writing:

My goal this month was to finish the first draft of Hero, and I’m one chapter away from finishing that. It might take me a day longer than I had originally planned.
I’m up to 18 pages of notes for Brightness of Shadow, my NaNoWriMo novel for this year. I can’t wait to actually be able to start writing it. I’ve had a couple quotes come to me, but I’m trying to not write anything yet. Today I had another scene come to me. More details are emerging about the book, which I’m pretty happy about. I added my novel to my NaNoWriMo page.
My goal for this month is to go through Hero and finish the second draft, and to do NaNoWriMo prep. I may write in some of my unfinished projects, like Saving Adelinetta, that I don’t plan on finishing until 2019.

Life:

More of the same. My dd spent another week and a half in the hospital. Sigh. She’s on another medicine that I hope works. Everything else is going to work, getting up, taking dd to school, writing, reading, and going to bed. Nothing exciting.

So that’s September. I pretty much have the books I’m reading planned out for October already. Lots of good books coming up to read.