Time for another edition of Fangirling on Friday, hosted by Books in the Skye. Today we’re supposed to talk about nicknames, but I can’t really think of good nicknames. So I’m just going to talk about some of my favorite names in general.
I’ve been doing a lot of fangirling over Dragonlance since this series started, but I just love the names in this series!
Laurana (Lauralanthalasa) – I loved the name so much that’s what I named my daughter!
Tanis (Tanthalas) – Again, awesome name. Named my boy that.
Raistlin – I love this name too. Too bad Raistlin turned out to be an evil character, or I would have probably given my boy this name.
Kitiara – That’s our cat’s name.
Free – Into the Hollow
I thought Free was a pretty cool name. I think it’s short for Freedom. So I guess that is a nickname and it fits into this week’s nickname theme.
Nathalie – Spectacle
This book comes out in February and I’m sure I’ll be fangirling about it plenty in the future. I think this was the first time I’ve ever seen this name, yet I actually ran into it another time this week. Weird.
Cyra – Carve the Mark
Cyra is such a cool name. I’ve mentioned this series quite a few times lately on my blog, since The Fates Divide was one of my favorite books from last year. I should really reread it sometime (I’ve only read the second book once so far). My daughter borrowed the first book in the series so I’ll have to find it first. Or I could read it in Spanish, which I have on my Kindle. I have so many other books I want to read first though.
So those are some of my favorite names in books. I’m sure I’m missing tons. What are your favorite names you’ve come across? Next week on Fangirling on Friday we’re going to talk about my favorite book from January. Maybe I’ll mention two, because there were two that really stood out.
For today’s edition of Fangirling on Friday, we’re discussing Dragons! Fangirling on Friday is hosted by Books in the Skye!
There haven’t been a lot of books with dragons lately that I’ve seen lately, but if I was to predict the future, I’d say that dragons will be making a comeback soon. Whenever people mention The Priory of the Orange Tree, one of the first things I hear people get excited about is the dragon on the cover. I think people want to read about dragons.
I hope that’s the case, because there is a dragon in my book. And I expect there to be lots of dragons in the second book. I’m still finishing up the first draft of the first book, so we’ll see what goes on with those dragons. A lot can change between the first draft and the finished product.
Anyway, I’ve been fangirling over books with dragons for a long time. For me, when I think about books with dragons in them, I think of Dragonlance. There’s about 100 books in this series (and spinoffs), and I’ve read the majority of them.
Dragonlance has a special place in my heart. When I had known my then-boyfriend for about two months, he gave me Dragons of Autumn Twilight. Guys, the way to a girl’s heart is books. Or at least it should be. I had to marry him a couple of years later, of course. We named our kids after Dragonlance characters. My daughter is lucky she was born in Italy, because otherwise we would have named her Lauralanthalasa. We were afraid they’d mess up the birth certificate though, so she got the nickname of Laurana instead.
Hopefully we’ll see more dragon books soon, but until then, there’s Dragonlance, Priory (coming out February 26th) and The Song of Ice and Fire (which I don’t recommend to younger readers).
Do you like books with dragons?
Next week: Favorite Nicknames of characters. I’m not sure what I’ll do with that one, but I’ll probably think of something.
Yesterday on Twitter I saw that Books in The Sky was starting a new weekly prompt: Fangirling on Friday. It sounded like a lot of fun, and I typically don’t post anything on Fridays, so I figured I’d try it out. I think her first prompt was from last Friday, so I decided to jump in — on a Sunday!
This week’s prompt was Fandoms, so I decided to start with my favorite fandoms: Book Fandoms I have Written Fanction For. Writing fanfiction takes a lot of effort, so there has to be a reason for it. Even reading fanfiction takes time from all of the other amazing books out there. So these are kind of in order from my earliest fandom favorites to last month.
The first two novels I ever wrote were band fanfics (that’s why I’m narrowing this topic to book fandoms). It took me a year to write both books. Then I stopped writing for a long time, as I went to college and got busy in other things.
But then I read Divergent. Probably the first book series I really fangirled over. I got to about page 50 in this book, and then… I read the rest of this book, Insurgent, and Allegiant in two days. I remember going to bed crying and heartbroken at 4 AM.
But at the same time, I thought “this is fiction. I’m not going to take this ending.” So the next day, I discovered fanfiction. I didn’t start writing it right away… and I really have to admit, I’m not very impressed by my first effort now. But my recent Divergent fusion fanfic with the next fandom turned out okay…
If we magically teleport forward to 2016, we’ll find the Legend fandom, which I’ve written the most fanfiction for to-date. My husband had to go to the hospital one evening (fairly routine for us because of his sickle cell anemia) and I had just reread Legend, and I thought, “what did happen to Day and June after Champion?” This was before Life after Legend or the Legend 4 announcement. I didn’t want to leave it at that, so I wrote my first Legend fanfic and… didn’t finish it. I only wrote 14 chapters.
Never fear, I got a note last February from someone who wanted to read the end of my story. I was missing writing by then, so I finished it. And I started writing more stories, in multiple fandoms. Which led to me starting my first original novel for last NaNoWriMo.
I write fanfiction because I want to tell a story about the existing characters that I already love. I fell in love with Adelina and Magiano. They’re so sweet together! After I read the ending to The Midnight Star, I didn’t want to leave it at that, but I saw a glimmer of hope at the end. So I started writing Saving Adelinetta. It’s on haitus at the moment, but so far it’s at over 68,000 words, and I have about 1/3 of the book left to write.
I also have a cute little modern-day AU that I set aside for NaNoWriMo where Adelina and Magiano meet over World of Warcraft. I was originally planning on a longer work, but I think this will make a cute short story. I can always write a sequel later. As a short story, I might be able to get this out in a month-ish. My non-fanfic work is taking priority though.
I just love Akos and Cyra from Carve the Mark! They’re perfect for each other. I was a little wary of The Fates Divide, especially with the tagline “He’d Die for Her, She’d Kill for Him” but I was pleasantly surprised about that end. So… I never felt the need to write a long novel or novella about these two, but I did write a very short story (only 618 words) about what happens to these two about five years after the end of the story. I don’t know if I’ll ever feel like I have to write more about their story, but you never know. I get ideas from the strangest of places.
The last story I’ve actually written was a strange combination of fandoms that I’ve never written about before: Clary and Jace from the Mortal Instruments run into Brenna and Patrick from Brenna Morgan and the Iron Key while they are being chased by a demon. Clary, thinking that she’s going to get them to someplace safe and planning on getting backup, accidentally teleports them to the universe of the story that I’m writing. And then they have to find their way home.
I’m not really comfortable writing much Shadowhunter’s fanfiction yet. There is so much to that universe, and I try to be very detail oriented with my fanfiction, so I haven’t written anything else yet. Although I do like to read Shadowhunter’s fanfiction.
The final fandom that I love enough to write fanfiction about is Warcross… kind of. I loved this duology, and I have nothing more to say about this particular story at the moment… however…
Marie Lu said that Asher Wing is related to Daniel Wing from Legend. That got me thinking: “how did the Wing family go from Asher being this mega superstar to Daniel’s family being dirt poor?” And “Why is June named June when she was born in July?” So, although I haven’t written a word to this story yet, I’ve been kicking around this story, about Asher’s grandchildren/Day and June’s grandparents (different sets of grandparents… I’m not going to make them inbreeding cousins or anything) that answers these questions. It’s going to be mostly original characters with cameo appearances from some people from Warcross.
So that’s it! Fandoms I fangirl over so much I write/read fanfiction of them! On Friday (no, I don’t plan on making the Sunday edition a thing) I plan on writing about Dragons!
