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Book Review: Episode Thirteen by Craig DiLouie

16 Tuesday Jan 2024

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Author: Craig DiLouie
Publisher: Redhook
Series: Stand Alone
Genre: Horror
Rating: 3 Stars
Medium: Paperback

The blurb from Amazon: 

Fade to Black is the newest hit ghost hunting reality TV show. Led by husband and wife team Matt and Claire Kirklin, it delivers weekly hauntings investigated by a dedicated team of ghost hunting experts.

Episode Thirteen takes them to every ghost hunter’s holy grail: the Paranormal Research Foundation. This brooding, derelict mansion holds secrets and clues about bizarre experiments that took place there in the 1970s. It’s also famously haunted, and the team hopes their scientific techniques and high tech gear will prove it. But as the house begins to reveal itself to them, proof of an afterlife might not be everything Matt dreamed of. A story told in broken pieces, in tapes, journals, and correspondence, this is the story of Episode Thirteen—and how everything went terribly, horribly wrong.

Review: 

I picked this up because it looked interesting and creepy and the back of the book sounded super interesting, ghost hunters filming their “Episode Thirteen” for their series are able to get into a location never before investigated before it’s being torn down for a resort.

The concept as a whole is interesting, the format of it being a book written from the perspective of found footage movies – think Blair Witch Project if you could read it, helped to keep it new and something I hadn’t seen before. I actually really loved the format concept, and they did a really good job of labeling everything, keeping the texts, journal entries, and what was documented off the film recordings clear and easily read.

The little blurbs on the book telling me it would ‘hook me, creep me out, and then overwhelm me’ gave me high hopes about the book and how creeped out I would be while reading it. Considering I’m giving the book three stars probably tells you that I was a little disappointed with the creep out factor.

The characters are well flushed out, and I loved that it was anchored in the real world as far as referencing other ghost hunting shows and the TV networks that air them, giving ‘Fade to Black’ comps so it felt like found footage in the written form. I also deeply love the way the author found a way to make found footage work on the page.

My issues and star drops start to happen because for me, while it’s a ghost hunting, horror suspense novel with review blurbs published on the front and back cover that promised me a hauntingly scary time. I wasn’t all that freaked out with the story. It didn’t haunt me, it didn’t make me fear the dark or the bumps in the night, and it didn’t really stay with me.

I’m also not entirely crazy about the ending and explanation of what’s going on. It kind of went around and around, but I’m not sure the ending really fit the horror suspense genre real well with the resolution of the book.

Do I regret reading it? No. I enjoyed the characters to a point and I did love the new experience to a differently formatted book.
Would I recommend it to others to read? Probably not. Especially not when going into it I expected horror and creep and scares that would make me want to keep the lights on when I went to bed.

Book Review: Hemlock Island by Kelley Armstrong

19 Thursday Oct 2023

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Author: Kelley Armstrong
Publisher: St. Martin’s Press
Series: Stand Alone
Genre: Horror
Rating: 2 Stars
Medium: Audio Book

The blurb from Amazon: 
Laney Kilpatrick has been renting her vacation home to strangers. The invasion of privacy gives her panic attacks, but it’s the only way she can keep her beloved Hemlock Island, the only thing she owns after a pandemic-fueled divorce. But broken belongings and campfires that nearly burn down the house have escalated to bloody bones, hex circles, and now, terrified renters who’ve fled after finding blood and nail marks all over the guest room closet, as though someone tried to claw their way out…and failed.

When Laney shows up to investigate with her teenaged niece in tow, she discovers that her ex, Kit, has also been informed and is there with Jayla, his sister and her former best friend. Then Sadie, another old high school friend, charters over with her brother, who’s now a cop.

There are tensions and secrets, whispers in the woods, and before long, the discovery of a hand poking up from the earth. Then the body that goes with it… But by that time, someone has taken off with their one and only means off the island, and they’re trapped with someone—or something—that doesn’t want them leaving the island alive.

I went into this book really looking forward to it. It’s spooky season. Kelley Armstrong is one of my favorite authors – I hands down love her Women of the Otherworld series. Though, if you caught the star rating above, you’ll already know that unfortunately I didn’t really love it.

Also just a warning there may be some spoilers in the review so if you haven’t read it and want to make your own opinion before reading mine, I suggest reading it and coming back to read my review.

The book started off well. We’re introduced to Hemlock Island by Laney getting a phone call from her current renters because there’s blood in a closet. Naturally, they aren’t interested in staying and want a refund for the shock. And after that call, Laney decides to head out to the island to check it out, and her ward and niece Madison in tow. As she gets to the island, we’re introduced to her ex-husband, Kit, who had actually been the one to gift her Hemlock Island and the house on it as a wedding present and his sister Jayla. After arriving on the island by boat, an old high school friend and her brother also show up. So we have a motley crew of six people that are checking out what’s going on in the house.

As the book develops we find out slowly the history between Kit and Laney, as well as Jayla and Sadie. As friendships go, their story is a spiderweb knotted history and the past only puts tension between all of them. Which, in the beginning, does help to amp up some of the tension for the novel too because they’re not sure what’s going on and things start to not add up.

It culminates in them finding a severed arm sticking out of the ground at the house and some back and forth on if it’s a real arm or a Halloween prop prank because people have been trying to push Laney into selling Hemlock Island.

The book as a whole at this point is giving slasher thriller vibes to the horror genre it was placed in, and as a whole I was here for it. Especially when they go to try and get off the island only to find that the boat is missing, but so is one of the six so the logical conclusion is they took off in the night with the boat and left them stranded. And a check to the personal shed where there should be some kayaks only leads to everything but a paddle board being destroyed. This leaves the remaining five trapped on the island with no way off and no communication to the outside world because there’s no service on Hemlock Island.

About half way through the book, give or take, the story veers into some really strange choices. Now that we’re halfway into the book, we start to get hints of strange paranormal happenings – like body parts that aren’t connected to the rest of the body still twitching and moving kind of hints. With body parts being used in strange ways, I was still kind of riding this, okay maybe it’s a weird Satanic cult kind of thing going on because some of the symbols were pulled out of Satanic books and off websites and things. Because it also means that in some ways, we’re still in that slasher, trapped on the island with the killer kind of vibe. After all, the killer could have used the current dead to raise something or feed the land kind of sacrifice need. So strange but still kind of riding that wave.

Then while trapped in the house, because of what they’d found with the body parts, the story careens sideways with this romance bubble where Laney and Kit have this heart to heart – because apparently now is the time to really work out what went wrong in their marriage, and also oh surprise there’s a secret kid in the mix to further complicate everything between everyone that had come to the island. The whole side-step of the narrative really felt off and out of place because as a whole, it didn’t have anything to do with the plot. The secret kid/how she was conceived felt purely there to be the full and soul reason for the rift between some of the group and fell a little flat as a whole. Though it could also be because all it did was add to the sideways pull from the horror genre we were supposed to be in.

To fully push us off the story cliff, or in tv land as we say, to jump the shark, surprise the big bad is the island spirit thing itself that’s been killing and fucking with them because apparently Laney broke a promise to it. Once she hadn’t even realized she’d made when Kit had brought her to the island and they decided to buy it and build the house on it. What really disappointed me was for someone who wrote a full paranormal series, the paranormal in this horror book fell so flat. There was gore for the sake of gore instead of a horror scare. The paranormal limitations of this creature/spirit/thing didn’t add up or make sense. And because it all came out of no where, for me at least because like I said before, I was totally down the slasher-trapped on the island with the killer – maybe it’s a paranormal cult killing. So to have it be some island spirit of the land thing was kind of weird.

Like I said above too, the limitations of the powers of this thing didn’t make sense, or well technically the lack there of. It’s creating a cloud of birds thick enough that the characters can’t see through – which means it likely would have had to pull them from the mainland realistically? It’s killing with the foliage – and making the vines sharp enough to actually sever limbs. It’s taking over the dead bodies to speak through them and make them move, but can also appear as the dead person as if they were whole and fine. Also it can take over NOT dead people? Like, this thing basically has the powers of a god, but also couldn’t stop someone from being killed because they were sleeping. When you really look at all the things this creature thing has done, the rules under which its being written and explained don’t make a whole lot of sense, almost like Kelley wasn’t able to actually give her full attention to ensuring that there were world rules on its powers and what they would be. It feels more like, let’s throw the kitchen sink at it when it comes to powers and what it can do, who cares if they all make sense together. Which again, since I love one of her paranormal series where she writes the vampires, werewolves, and other supernatural with a clear boundary of their powers and limitations, was severely disappointing to me.

All in all, I guess if you don’t mind not looking too hard at the whys, and don’t mind a little genre whiplash, take a try of this book. Though I would recommend waiting until you can get it on sale.

New Year, New Goals

12 Wednesday Jan 2022

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So how are we all feeling now that 2022 has fully set in?

My Holiday season was filled with family, a friend that came for a visit, and some rest. My Aunt was kind enough to grab the Self-publishing Marketing books I requested for Christmas and my Cousin got me some more things for my Cricut so I need to get back into doing the coasters and mugs. I still haven’t actually set up my mug press in my Craft Room.

With the new year, and having a friend over for the Holidays, it made mom and I even more aware that we need to reorganize the Craft Room – with some shifting of the stuff in there we can fit a day bed in it and make it a guest room as well – because right now any guests have to sleep on the pull-out couch which 1) I didn’t realize how hard it was for sleeping all night and 2) is in the living room so barely any privacy.  But I’ve been wanting an excuse for a deep clean anyway, so this gives the perfect reasoning.

So that leads well into 2022 and my goals. I have a few, but I’m trying to keep them to a manageable amount.

  1. Clean the Craft Room and set it up as a partial Guest Room.
  2. Finish Book 2 of the Ragnarok Trilogy with my co-author and publish in July.
  3. Finish editing Into the Faerietale and get that out this year – thinking September-ish for it.
  4. Finish writing, edit, and get a short novella-length story out on my other pen name.
  5. Get my Ko-Fi shop running a little better both with book merch, books, and the necklaces I’ve been making.

All in all, it’s a manageable list, I think. A secondary goal is to create some more merch for both Hotel Fen and Into the Faerietale. I have the bookplates that I need to get up on the shop – so if people buy the physical book through Amazon or B&N and want our signatures on them, they can grab one. I also splurged and made pins:

Which I think came out amazing! They’re metal and enamel with butterfly clasps on the back. And I made special pin backings for them that match the bookplates the signatures are on.

But yes, those are my 2022 goals. What are your goals for the year? I’d love to hear them!

Book Review: Caffeinated Calamity by Amanda M. Lee

08 Wednesday Dec 2021

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Author: Amanda M. Lee
Publisher: Amanda M. Lee
Series: A Two Broomsticks Gas & Grill Witch Cozy Mystery
Genre: Paranormal Romance, Cozy Mystery
Rating: 4 Stars

Can you tell that I’m enjoying the series already since we’re now on book two?

Yes, we’re back with Stormy Morgan, new witch in the small town of Shadow Hills, Michigan. Well, technically, make that only witch in Shadow Hills since her great-grandmother moved away to Florida years back. Which means that she’s navigating this new power all on her own, while she tries to keep it fairly quiet from her family, the town and her not-quite boyfriend, Hunter.

Overall, the writing is cute and I’m enjoying the characters and continuation of the story and what’s going on with Stormy. Book two actually opens up with a Prologue set in Hemlock Cove, a town over from Shadow Hills with Bay and Thistle Winchester. From reading other reviews, of the first book and this book I had already picked up that this was a series set in a much bigger universe from her other series. This prologue, for those who haven’t read any of her other series, pretty much confirms it. I did a little digging to link that the Winchesters are from her ‘Wicked Witches of the Midwest’ books, of which there are currently nineteen out. Something I might tackle later because I can’t say I’m not interested in reading Bay’s story from the beginning.

Spoilers weaved in and out of my review ahead, so read at your discretion.

I did like this book a little more than the first, though I think part of it is because while it’s frustrating Stormy, Hunter is trying to actually do the right thing by not just jumping into a relationship with Stormy so soon after his breakup with Monica. Stormy as a whole is worried that it’s because she’s not sure if it’s due to Hunter having second thoughts, but he does confirm it’s because he knows he was in the wrong with how he treated Monica and wanted to give it some time before the relationship was more or less rubbed into Monica’s face.

While the town might still be gossiping about them, I actually appreciate him trying to do the right thing and not give the town MORE to gossip about or throw in her face.

As well, Stormy is starting to come to terms with her being a witch, with her friend Sebastian dragging her off to Hemlock Cove to the Winchester’s store in an effort to get her to kind of feel out the family because it’s a well-known not-secret that they are in fact witches.

The speed at which the murders are happening in town since Stormy came back is a little concerning though. We’re only a few weeks after the conclusion of the first book, where someone was murdered behind the family restaurant when one drops dead as she’s leaving from breakfast – the ultimate conclusion for death being poisoned. So again, another murder. (And I’m already partway into book three, which takes place only a few weeks after this one, and again, a new murder) So we’re talking like, three murders in the span of like a month and a half – two months? That’s a LOT, especially for a small town. It asks for a lot of suspension of disbelief – it’s easier to believe the speed of murders were it in a larger town, because more people, but in a town where everyone knows everyone and the largest gossip outside of the murders is that Hunter’s truck was parked behind the restaurant so everyone knows he spent the night at Stormy’s apartment – it takes a decent amount of disbelief for ‘reading reasons’ to wonder why people haven’t fleed this town ages ago if this is how fast people are dropping.

The book had a similar feel of book one, where we’re focusing on Stormy and her magic, or Stormy and Hunter a lot and sometimes it does feel like the murder and the mystery of it get pushed back a little for the other things. I like that magic is starting to take a bigger roll in the books as Stormy is learning about it and of it, though I also feel like if there was a little more time between each book (and murder) there’s some hand waving, Stormy has been learning and so we can speed up the rate at which she’s learning to use it a little more. However, I do feel like we had a little more sleuthing about the murder and into why it happened than the first book, so the conclusion of the who, how, and why came a little more in flow with the rest of the book.

I’d definitely still recommend it if you’re looking for a cute, cozy mystery to read with a hint of paranormal/witchy flare. And I will say with the cameos from the Winchester family, I am curious to read their story from their perspective – or well, Bay’s perspective mostly. Their appearance makes me wish I knew of them before picking up this book, and you can tell there’s a large family dynamic going on among them, but at the same time, I think they were handled well in that I don’t feel that I was missing anything from not reading their books that affected how they interacted with Stormy and her story as a whole.

Book Review: Sinfully Delicious by Amanda M. Lee

03 Friday Dec 2021

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Author: Amanda M. Lee
Publisher: Amanda M. Lee
Series: A Two Broomsticks Gas & Grill Witch Cozy Mystery
Genre: Paranormal Romance, Cozy Mystery
Rating: 4 Stars

Sinfully Delicious is a Cozy Mystery that follows our main character, Stormy Morgan, as she tries to settle back into her hometown of Shadow Hills, Michigan after having left it for several years. We learn quickly that she left Shadow Hills for college and to become a writer, which she was successful with for the first book.

With the failure of her second book, her publisher canceled her contract and with no prospects at the moment, and little to her name or cash in her bank account, she finds herself back in her hometown.

Overall, Sinfully Delicious was a cute start to a new series. I haven’t read any of Amanda Lee’s books before now, so this is my entrance into her as an author as well and overall I do like what I see. I can confirm I’m already eight chapters into the second book for this series, because I liked it enough to want to continue and see where this story goes with the main character Stormy, as well as her grandfather and her ex.

Spoilers weaved in and out of my review ahead, so read at your discretion.

Stormy is an interesting character, and while she does come off a little whiny at life and her lot in it with having to find herself back in her hometown, living above her family’s restaurant by the grace of her grandfather’s working with her on the rent to lease the place, if you really think about it wouldn’t you be a little whiny if you were in her shoes too? No one expects to make it, break it, and find themselves back at home after college. I will say, I would have liked to see her pull her bootstraps up a little bit more than she did as a whole with being an adult that’s almost thirty, but to be fair and realistic, I’ve seen this attitude first hand so I can’t say it’s not wrong or inaccurate with how people are sometimes either.

Her grandfather is possibly one of my favorite characters in the book. Especially with his disappearing acts whenever Hunter, local cop and Stormy’s ex-boyfriend, comes around to try and talk to him. Especially when he pops back up after Hunter leaves like he’d been at the counter cooking the entire time she’d been looking for him and Hunter was there.

I do have to say I wasn’t thrilled with Hunter as a whole, more with how he was using his current girlfriend throughout the book. It’s both said about him from a friend, as well as he does more or less outright say he knew that it was never going to work with Monica, but he kept her around because he wanted to have a wall or shield against having Stormy come back so he could have a super easy way of keeping Stormy at arm’s length. Which is 100% not fair to Monica to be strung along for almost a month just because he was scared of how it might go between him and his ex-girlfriend. While I didn’t like Monica, I do sympathize with her a little because she was, in effect, a pawn to Hunter when she thought he actually cared about her.

Sinfully Delicious is sold as a Witch Cozy Mystery, and while like I did say I’m into book 2 already, the first book doesn’t do a lot for bringing in the paranormal to the book to tag the first book a witch book. We slowly learn, with Stormy, that she has powers that she accidentally unlocked one night while playing with a Ouija board. By the end of the book it’s clear she has powers and comes from a witch line on her grandfather’s side – and honestly with the way her grandfather seems to be able to pop in and out of sight at the drop of a hat I wouldn’t be surprised if later on in the series we find out that he does have at least a small bit of magic he keeps to himself. But as a whole I wish for a WITCH cozy mystery there’d been a little more WITCH to it.

As well, while there is a death and a mystery, I did find myself feeling like the mystery aspect of it took a large backseat to the romance aspect with the push and pull of Stormy and Hunter as they tried to navigate their feelings for each other.

Maybe I’m just used to the cozy mysteries where the main character has her nose in EVERYTHING when it comes to trying to sniff out the who dun it, with the story focusing on the mystery and the romance being the secondary plot so having it almost flipped left me a little disappointed with the mystery as a whole. But it felt like the wrap-up of the mystery was a little rushed in this book. As a whole, the mystery was wrapped up decently well and it all made sense to the story and plot, it just felt a little like we realized we had gotten to the end of the book and needed to wrap it up so let’s get on that, kind of ending.

But at the end of the day, it’s also a cozy mystery, and it was a cute and cozy read.

Windycon Wednesday

17 Wednesday Nov 2021

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So, this last weekend in the Windy City known as Chicago (and believe me it was super windy this weekend. We had trouble opening the hotel doors a lot of the time we were in and out) every November we have Windycon. A Science Fiction and Fantasy convention that hosts a dealer’s room, an art show, and guests of honor. As well as a host of panels to attend.

It’s a lot of fun, and I know that well because I’ve grown up attending it, as well as a few other cons around the area. My dad used to sell at cons when I was little, so I’m not kidding about growing up attending the conventions. I learned to handle room issues, like the tv not working, when I was small enough I couldn’t be seen over the hotel front desk. I’ve corralled the kids at the conventions to make sure no one was left out when we had fun. And as a teen, I learned how to use the gopher option to my advantage so I could get half my registration back as dealer’s room spending money by doing a few hours of badge check work at the door without my parents’ knowing that I got half the reg they paid back to spend on that artwork or book I walked out of the dealer’s room with.

If you haven’t attended a SciFi /Fantasy Con and you read the genres? You should totally try to see if there’s one in your area to attend. Hearing people’s takes on why fantasy is the way it is, or the history of urban fantasy is always an interesting panel to take in. The Dealer’s room itself always has some incredible finds – this year there was a person selling handmade pottery (his stuff is beautiful) and another person had handmade wood pieces like dice trays and towers.

Most of my time was spent in the Dealer’s Room this year because I was pushing the book I wrote with my co-author. The table just couldn’t be considered complete without a plushie to represent a lot of people’s favorite character from the novel – the black cat, Ada. =)

But I also had some of my art on the table for sale as well because I do paintings, necklaces (though someone did suggest trying to do earrings in a similar fashion that I need to look into), and inspired by the book – handmade and painted rune sets and individual rune keychains.

I will say that attending the Convention as a full-fledged dealer is a lot different than attending as just an attendee. Mainly because as an attendee you have the ease to flit from place to place and see all the things, attending all the panels, and you aren’t really tied down to anything. As a dealer, you want to be at your table so you can sell your wares, talk to people who might be interested in them, and meet new people that way.

I really enjoyed talking to the people I met as a dealer. We had some interesting conversations about covers, about paint (because of my paintings), and about crafting as a whole. Plus I made a few new contacts that also do book things, so that was really cool. I can’t wait to be able to jot the dates down on the vacation schedule for next year once Windycon releases the 2022 dates and snag a dealer’s table again.

Do you attend conventions in your area? Are they big or small? Did you before the pandemic that you’re hoping to get back to but just haven’t yet? Let me know down in the comments!

Week 1 – NaNoWriMo and the quest for the Words

08 Monday Nov 2021

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So, we’re a week into November (it’s a week and one day, but I am not counting today just yet because I still have 12 hours to get some words in between and after my work day today.

Are you participating in NaNo this year? (Let me know down in the comments!)

My first week has been fairly good as a whole. I had one day where work got to be too much so I just rolled crashed after a couple hundred words – but I was able to keep my check-ins every day going at least.

Currently, I’m pretty sure my word count would make a really good rollercoaster ride. I’m also trying to figure out a way to help me keep this fairly consistent momentum through and after NaNo – because if I can keep this up as a whole I could get a little more done with things.

More done would be great because I have:

  • a book that just needs editing
  • a book that technically just needs a final two chapters, though reflecting back on some of it I’m considering a semi-full rewrite. Maybe.
  • A novella that’s half done and the other half is semi-outlined I just need to flush it out and finish it
  • and more story ideas than I can count.

Plot bunnies abound, really. Which is also why I’m working on creating a Story Idea Journal because I’m tired of losing some of my ideas when I jot them down in a notebook that’s for something else, or in my planner than I then don’t look at for two years.

Do you have a good way of keeping your story ideas centralized and easily accessed when you get one? Or are yours like me, kind of all over the house?

Manic Monday

04 Monday Oct 2021

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I know that Monday tends to be a very large sigh of not again when we all start a new week (Somehow Sunday never feels like the start of a week despite though that’s likely just me because I work a Monday through Friday job).

Despite the very Monday feel to today, I hope that everyone reading this has or had a wonderful Monday. That it brought you something good, something that was able to make you smile, or at least something that wasn’t adding to your stress.

My Monday has been going a little everywhere – and by that, I mostly mean my brain. I have several things on my awareness that I want to do and I’m having a hard time trying to focus on one because all of them want my attention. So here I sit working on this blog post instead.

The Monday’est of Mondays.

 

Since my last blog post what have I been doing?
That’s a very good question honestly.

The boring answer is work. Work. And, more work. (My 9-5 has been eating a decent amount of my brain). However, that’s not ALL I’ve been doing either.

My co-author and I have been working on Book 2 for our Nine Universe, sequel to Hotel Fen and middle book of the Ragnarok Trilogy.
– We created a Wiki for the series. Super fun as a whole, not going to lie.
– Officially settled on the title for Book 2 – Monster Ridge – with the book slated for release July 23, 2022.
– And of course, we can’t write a book without an Outline, so we have spent the last month or so outlining the book. We finished it a little while back, the outline. The plan is to NaNo the book like we did for Hotel Fen. It worked really well as a whole for book one, so here’s hoping it works well for book two!

As well, my co-author has been sliding me short story competitions for magazines and things and when my brain can get around their theme, it’s been fun trying to write a few shorts for those.

We currently have a joint submission we wrote over a weekend pending decision.

As well, I submitted to FloraFiction.com’s Fall Haunting theme. You can find their website here: florafiction.com and you can find my submission “Lingering Ice” within its pages (page 16 to be specific) but you should definitely check out the magazine as a whole because there were a lot of good shorts, poems, and art/photography in the issue.

I have plans to overhaul my website a little more, make it a little more clean as a whole. So watch out for that in the coming months too!

Before I go though, how did your September go? Any hopes or plans for October to make spooky season fun? Let me know in the comments!

Catch Up

12 Monday Apr 2021

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I’m not even sure how we’re almost half way through April, I’m going to be completely honest with you. February and March passed quickly, leaving barely a trace of themselves behind as I stand here blinking at the progression of time. I mean, I know that they passed, my co-author and I worked really hard to finish our first draft by the end of Feb, which we ALMOST met deadline for. We technically finished it on March 1st, but that’s a close enough finish that I’m super happy with it.

March flew past in a blur. Things ramped up at work and I used March as a month to let the draft sit and get some space from, though we’re almost halfway into April and I am reminded that I need to dig into the edits now. I have some edits to make because I had someone read it and note all across it, plus re-reading to see where it needs edits myself as well. But I have faith that I’ll get there, and that we’ll get there, because my co-author is planning to read through and edit the draft after I run through it.

Meanwhile we’re already trying to outline books two and three so they’re all in line with each other from the start. We want to make sure the book plot and the overarching plot of the trilogy work well across the three books. So all the outlining and planning for us. And still pretty on par with our July release deadline we set for ourselves.

Life wise, things have been as they have been. Which is to say, the world is still in a pandemic, we’re mostly still stuck at home. I and my mother have both been fortunate enough to get the vaccine, we both work with hospital staff and doctors, pharmacists and residents who see patients so we were in the 1B section of the population. For those who might be wondering, neither of us had much in the way of side effects. I slept for the day after getting it, she was tired the day after but over all after 24 hours we were both fine. And we’re still making sure to be super careful and follow all the masking and hand washing recommendations.

I’m really glad that the weather has warmed up again, I’ve decided that while I’m working from home I’m going to strive to take like, an hour or two on the laptop and work outside so I can get some fresh air and get out of the house a little while still working. Of course, after the first day of doing this, it’s rained every day since. So, fun times there. And because of the rain, my migraines haven’t been great, though I’m trying a new medication recommended to me, over the counter, and it seems to be helping some. I still have them, but they’re less crawl under my desk and cry these days. So I can work through them so long as I’m in a hat or a non-florescent lit room. Small favor.

Over all I’m hoping to get back to writing on here more consistently. Wish me luck.

I hope, dear readers, that you’re staying healthy and safe.

And time vanishes

12 Tuesday Jan 2021

Posted by in Personal Thoughts, Writing

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So I lost my weekend to the best reason possible. All the words. All the words is definitely a good thing to lose time to though. My co-author on Project Norse and I decided to try and do a 10K words in a day challenge for our respective Saturdays.

As a whole, the challenge went well. We realized fairly early on that our time zone difference made for an interesting addition to the challenge, because with her in the Philippines and me in the United States, being fourteen hours apart means we can’t just boomerang the novel back and forth between us all day. For a good chunk of the writing time, one of us was sleeping while the other was writing.

We made it work though by working on different scenes in the novel at once. Like, I think we were working on four or five different areas to go back and forth with each other, but then also we had a couple areas where one of us took the lead on a certain scene and ran with it.

Neither of us hit 10,000 words on Saturday, but both of us got a little more than halfway through. She finished her 10,000 words on her Sunday. I didn’t, because I ran into a secondary challenge for a long da like that. So back in May 2019 I had my dominant hand’s wrist in a cast. And ever since that accident I’ve had serious problems with my wrist when I over work it.

Well apparently it feels that 6,372 words it decided was over working it. My morning went super well and I was able to get a little over 2,000 words before breakfast, but it had started to ache after that and just get progressively worse through the day as I tried to alternate between resting it and working on more words as I could.

Sunday was pretty much a get nothing done, only rest it day. Also, all the grocery shopping and things I had meant to do that I pushed off from Saturday, so no real other words happened over the weekend. But still, we were able to get about 16,000 words collectively on our novel over the weekend, which is awesome! Since we have that July deadline for publishing, it’s great that we’re able to make so much progress on it as a whole for draft one. As well, when we were awake at the same time and not writing, we were able to flush out our outline to really hone into the timeline of what we what to happen when and how we kind of want it to go so we have guiding things to get us there. Overall, it’s a super productive weekend.

And then yesterday I also realized part of the problem with my wrist is that when I have to work on campus and cover the front desk, that the angle the desk is at compared to the chair is part of my problem. We’ll see if anyone complains about the chair, because I lowered it by like a TON, but I’m hoping since it’s just a little lever, that they’ll just shift it for them when they’re on campus and no one will complain. But the angle was not okay for me anymore. within the first hour of working at the desk my wrist felt like it did after writing 6K words from Saturday, only worse. So yeah, something had to change. I also shifted how the monitors were set on the desk, but those were put back after my shift so no one had to worry about them.

I’m hoping my work week goes fairly quiet as a whole, and I can continue to get words in on the novel. I really want to continue this momentum that we’ve found on getting things done on the different chapters. I’d personally love it if we could have draft one finished by either the end of January or the really early beginning of February so we can get those edits in hard and fast.

Hope your week goes well, readers! And if you did anything you’re proud of, drop a comment and let me know!

Also, if you’re wondering what the image has to do with this post, well, it’s partially just because it’s my kitty and I love him. And partially because that’s legitimately how tired I feel right now.