It is a fact universally acknowledged that your favorite quotes reveal a lot about yourself. Those soft, poetic lines that reveal your dreams. The more poignant sentiments that show your flavor of cynicism. Even the random bits of dialogue that will make sense to no one else, but tell everyone what your brand of humor is. They all intertwine in the tapestry of your personality. And it's beautiful. As a reader, I of course have a ton of quotes by favorite authors. (As a human

So, we all know how stories start, right? Something–a song, a book, a movie, a phrase, whathaveyou–triggers a scene. A thought. A 'what if?' question. And then you're off. There are people in your brain, voices in your head, and scenes amassing, begging to be written. So you write. Just a snippet here. A line there. Slowly piecing things together until you're sure you have enough to start with. Then you're off again to construct a whole story. I imagine that for short stories

Am I maybe, finally, hitting my stride when it comes to Demon Kin: The Lovers?? No. No, I absolutely am not. And I felt so confident when I first wrote that sentence. I was moving things along for the plot. Conflicts with other characters were about to be exacerbated. People were finally going to start dying. I was ready for it. Here for it. Thought I finally found my groove... Life sucks. Work sucks. This has been a shitty, shitty week. I want to fall into a hole and stay th

So I'm just stopping in to say that this has been a not good week. I've been very emotionally/physically burnt out in regards to work. Even the accomplishments I was proud of got overshadowed by the overall stress. Today has given me more stress and worry, so I'm not going to try to be cute and fun in this post. I'm still here. I'm still writing. I had ideas for what to post, and I'll probably start a draft of that, but right now this feels like yet one more thing on my plate

So, obviously this post is very overdue. You can blame #authorfriendJen. I know I said the next post would probably be a review of her book, but this one isn't because I'm on a time crunch. Honestly, between all the jobs and my own writing, it just took longer to read it than I was anticipating. Some pivotal scenes have since been changed, so I'm waiting for another eARC in order to delve into it as a reader and not as someone working on it. Which is always fun. That said, I

Okay, so last week I posted about how I got 3 new books to read. Apparently, that was wrong. Because, not long after posting that, #authorfriendJen reached out and basically said, "Hey, that book you read a couple of months ago that I speed-wrote like some possessed spirit, I'd like you to proofread it. Do you have time?" (Paraphrasing for comedic effect. Obviously.) And of course I said, "I will MAKE time." (That one is a direct quote.) Thus, I have a fourth book to read! Fo

This week's blog post was supposed to be a kind of essay discussing different types of fantasy books I like to read. Weeeeellllll.... That was before three new books came in. TO BE FAIR, 2 out of the 3 were very recently released at the end of March, and I simply held off on the other one that released a couple of months ago. So all are actually new, not just new to me. I did actually take a picture of the books when I got them, but my phone is being a brat about sending them

There were many possible topics for this blog post. I thought about 'Vacation's Over, Back To Work' or another Ori Diaries segment. (He was not the best behaved while we were gone.) Or even something to do with the cats. Mostly what I could have done was drown you in images of my trip. (Which I might add to this post at a later date.) I'm not doing any of that. Some of it requires too much effort, and others are just boring. Instead, I'm going to talk about my vacation. Obvio

Traveler Brain and Writer Brain are best friends, and no one can tell me otherwise. I've spoken before about my ability to write while on planes and in airports and whatnot. Normally, I do pretty good in those areas ... when I'm traveling solo. While traveling with the boyfriend, it's a little different in airports. Instead of snagging one of the fancy bar stools on a flat surface so that I can charge my laptop as I write, I instead end up in the regular seating areas with hi

My friends were supposed to remind me to write this. They failed. Which is fine, because I forgot our last writer date due to working too late. We're even. That said, there's a lot to say and yet almost nothing at all, so I'm diving in. No. Literally. This week is all about scuba diving. At least, it would be if health and equipment failures would stop messing with me. This week, the bf and I are in the Cayman Islands (Cayman Brac) for diving. We went with an awesome group le