March 2020 Doings!

Hey'a, all! So, I think we can all agree that this last month has been utter madness, yeah? It feels like overnight, we went from "This is normal" to "State of national panic," and we're all realizing why "May you live in interesting times" is considered a curse. But for now, most of us are (I'm pretty sure) alive, so the Doings! go on as usual.

Writing!

Social distancing can't stop a good adventure, y'know?

• My goal for March was 300 words or 30 minutes per day, five days a week. I'm happy to say that I've mostly kept that goal; the only week I failed to achieve it was the second week of March — aka, the week that all insanity broke loose. Before and after that, I've kept up pretty well, with a daily average of close to 750 words per day.
• Most of those words went towards D&D writing. As I think I mentioned at some point, I wanted to get the rest of my D&D campaign (or at least this season of it) written before Camp NaNoWriMo began. I didn't quite achieve that goal, but I mostly accomplished it, so I'm happy.
• In addition, my DM for the campaign I'm in asked if I had any info about my character's family that I wanted to give him. My response was basically "How much do you want?" My character's family is a pretty significant part of her backstory, plus I love character creation, so I took the opportunity and ran with it. The end result was about nineteen pages long and had three or four paragraphs of information for each of the twenty-ish characters on my character's family tree (all of which are parents, step-parents, siblings, or step-and-half-siblings, for the record). My goal was to provide enough information that if I (or someone else) ever needed to play them as an actual character, the only thing I'd have to do would be figuring out statistics and exact mechanics. Given how disappointed I was that I can't actually play some of them, I think I succeeded.
• Outside of D&D, I've lately been doing some brainstorming on the realmatic theory of my multiverse with a friend of mine, basically figuring out implications of the parallel and perpendicular worlds that I proposed in this year's New Years special. It's been fun; he's much more of a planner than I am, and he asks good questions that help me find the holes in my ideas and the concepts that need more development or don't make sense. I also ended up making diagrams in Illustrator to help me think through my ideas, and that was unreasonably fun.

Reading!

• So, yes. That is a grand total of three books that I've read this month. They were all very good books, though, so that counts for something, right?
• As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I reread the Wingfeather Saga so I could review the new editions. They're just as good this time around as they were the first, if not better. If you want to know more, you can check out the post I wrote with my thoughts.
• The other book I read was Bryan Davis's new release, Let the Ghosts Speak. And — yes, it was weird. But it was also twisty and mysterious and atmospheric and thought-provoking and excellent for reading while curled up under the covers on a dark night. On that note, I apparently misreported the release date; it came out in paperback on Amazon just a few days ago, so if you want to pick it up (which you should; it's excellent), you can do that already! But, yeah. I'm going to post a full thoughts post next Friday, but you don't need to wait for that unless you really want to.
• I also finally finished reading the Schlock Mercenary webcomic. Or, rather, I caught up to the most recent posts . . . which means I'm stuck reading it at the very slow pace of one comic per day. I mean, don't get me wrong; most of the webcomics I read update once a week, so this is an improvement! But since I initially read it at the rate of a few books a day, it's a tiny bit agonizing. But it's still a very good webcomic. (I also discovered a few other very good webcomics in the last several weeks, so perhaps I shall do another "Favorite Webcomics" list at some point in the near future.)

Watching!

• So, funny story. My roommate loves this movie, Romancing the Stone. Despite what the name implies, it's an Indiana-Jones-esque adventure movie featuring a successful romance writer as the lead character. Anyway. For the past year at least, we've been saying that we should watch it together — but we never did, because we can barely find time to watch Avatar, let alone a full-length movie.
• Then, after I get back to Virginia the second time, my family decides to watch a movie. And we're going through the usual "well, what are we going to watch, given that no two people in this household actually have the same taste in movies" dialogue (we really don't; it's a problem), and I ask about another movie that my parents had out from the library that Alana really enjoys, The Great Race. And the parents have already watched it, but my mom brings up the fact that we actually own Romancing the Stone . . . so we watch it, because we can all actually agree on it.
• And it was actually really good. I honestly might prefer it to the one Indiana Jones I've watched — though that's partially because it includes some of my actual favorite tropes. It also helps that the female lead actually does take initiative and isn't just useless — she sometimes is clueless, yes, but it scans as a more realistic "city slicker lost in the jungle and in way over her head" sort of clueless, so it doesn't really bother me.
• (I still find the timing of when I watched it ironic, though.)

Life!

• So, we left off our last Doings! with me still at home, just finishing up Spring Break. This Doings! finds me home once again . . . but that's getting a bit ahead of myself.
• I did actually go back to Cedarville, for the record, getting back Sunday, March 8 — which was, honestly, a really good day. My friends and I celebrated with a cheese-and-game night, which was both delicious and delightful.
• Monday and Tuesday were a bit rough, as I was tired even with the rest I'd gotten over spring break and I was having a hard time getting back into the rhythm of life. Tuesday, Dr. White, Cedarville's president, made an announcement in chapel that no, Cedarville wasn't going to shut down; we were going to keep on going as we had.
• Aaaaaand then things went sideways, and Tuesday evening, one of the girls in our dorm with a late-in-the-day class said that her professor had strongly implied that Cedarville would be shutting down after all  — and once I'd heard that one rumor, more seemed to come out of the woodwork. That Tuesday night was honestly harder than any other day or night this month. All that's happened since then has been hard. But the mix of certainty and uncertainty — the fact that I knew things, but I couldn't act on them because I didn't know them — the fact that I knew but couldn't ask any professors about it because I wasn't supposed to know — that left me sleepless and afraid.
• Wednesday morning, people tried to carry on as normal. The chapel was packed; everyone was waiting to hear what was going to happen. Dr. White had our chapel speaker speak as usual, though he kept the message short. And then he came up and made the announcement: Cedarville was going online for two weeks; all students who could vacate the dorms were to do so by Friday, and classes were canceled for the next two days so professors could figure out how to transition.
• My sister and I hastily made plans: we'd spend the weekend with my roommate's family so we could let the main rush of departing traffic get ahead of us and so I could have a little more time with my roommate, just in case. Then we headed back to Virginia a week after we'd returned to Cedarville.
• Since then, we've mostly been trying to find a rhythm and attempting to keep up with all that needs to be done. Everything seems to take longer at home because I don't have class times and meal times and evening plans and everything else to work around. And I am utterly sick of seeing people talk about having all this free time at home, even anxiety-plagued free time. Technically, I do have more free time than I did at Cedarville. But it sure doesn't feel like I do.
• Anyway. On a happier note, I got a new laptop! It's very sleek and fancy and can fold into a tablet if I want it to. And it comes with a digital pen/stylus, which is going to be great for graphic design and art stuff once I figure out the most effective way to use it. And it's just so pretty and crisp and actually works with Bluetooth transmissions without a USB dongle thing and yeah.
• I also tried out another new sourdough roll recipe, this time with sausage-sandwich-type rolls. Mine turned out a bit shorter than I intended them to; I think I worried too much about making them big enough around and not enough about making them long enough. (I miscalculated which directions they'd puff, pretty much.) But they tasted great and ended up working well enough for Italian sausage sandwiches.
• Also, the last two D&D sessions in the campaign I'm a player in have been interesting. Long story short, we were trying to temporarily take control of a sizable band of orcs so we could stop them from attacking a city (because we had seven people including NPC allies, and that's not enough to take on a thousand+ orcs) by tricking them into thinking we were someone else (a plan my character was not 100% on board with, but she couldn't come up with a better idea) . . . and we actually were succeeding for a while. And then my character decided she wanted to check on an NPC whom the orcs had captured and whom we were hoping to rescue, and that indirectly led to our sorcerer, who was leading the deception, making a couple mistakes that revealed he wasn't who he claimed to be . . . not to everyone, mind you, but to one particular orc. Who then decided to corner my paladin in the dead of night and question her until she tripped up, which happened a lot faster because, y'know, deception is not my or my character's strong suit. So, yes. The party wizard and I were the only ones of the party still in the camp (the sorcerer was off doing other things; the ranger and the fighter/warlock had gone to track down another orc), so we got chased out, and then our sorcerer rolled poorly multiple times while trying to teleport back to us and high-key nearly died, so . . . yeah. This is why they tell you not to split the party. Also why you shouldn't try to run a con with a paladin in the party. Even if the paladin isn't so strictly lawful that she'll sabotage the plan on principle, the odds of her being able to keep up the cover under pressure aren't great.

• Also, I made crumpets. Well, technically, they're pikelets. But still. Life goal accomplished.

April Plans

• I'm probably insane, but yes, I'm doing Camp NaNoWriMo. I'm aiming for 30,000 words, primarily on Blood in the Earth/Soil (nope, still haven't decided which one I'm naming it) . . . but, I also have a session left to write in this season of my D&D campaign, a white paper, and a capstone paper. So, in the interest of not going crazy, I'm going a little bit rebel and ruling that at least half or 500 words of my daily count have to be in my novel . . . but the other half can be other projects, whether that's D&D, school projects, or another writing project with a quickly-approaching deadline. Hopefully, that will help keep me sane.
• My sister and I also have to go back to Cedarville this month to get all the stuff we couldn't cram into our car on the trip down, so prayers for that would be appreciated. No one likes the fact that we have to travel, but we also need our things.
• Outside of that, I'll just be keeping on with business as usual, or as close to it as possible with the online classes situation. It's honestly starting to feel almost normal at this point, even the pandemic, which is . . . scary. But normal means that people, myself included, are functioning, so I'll take it.
• In D&D news, the campaign I run is about to hit its season two finale, which I am very excited about! I have the whole thing written already, though I do need to make a couple edits based on last session. (I may have made those last night after I finished writing this post. Hard to say.) I think it'll be a properly difficult challenge for the end of a storyline, and we should have some interesting character moments . . . I hope so, anyway.
• I would like to be able to do some baking at some point, but we'll see if that happens or not. Flour, as it turns out, is on the list of things that are hard to find (partially because of people stocking up for social isolation; partially because everyone and their aunt is apparently doing sourdough now). We'll see what happens.

How was your March? What's something good that's happened in your life lately? Are you doing Camp NaNoWriMo this month? (And if you are, do you need a writing group? Or another writing group? Deborah O'Carroll and I made one, and we have spots open!) Please tell me in the comments!
Thanks for reading!
-Sarah Pennington

February 2020 Doings!

Behold! I live! I apologize for dropping off the face of the earth, blog-wise, the last two weeks. With classes, writing, social events, and the need for decent sleep all coming in front of the need to write blog posts, blogging just didn't happen. And, fair warning, I might be a bit spotty for the next couple months as well. But for now, I'm here (and on spring break!), so let's get on with the Doings of the last month!

Writing!

• My goal for February was to write 500 words or 30 minutes a day, five days per week. I kept that goal for the first three weeks, and then I gave myself the last week as a grace week because I had a lot to get done before I left on break. Still, I wrote a total of 16,707 words, with an average of 756 words per day, so I'd say that's pretty solid.
• Most of those words were D&D-related, unsurprisingly. I wrote a one-shot, plus three campaign episodes (one of which could have been a one-shot in its own right — that one involved homebrewing my own monster villain, which was interesting), plus the Valentine's Day short stories. For anyone who missed those, they showcased the first meeting of a pair of NPCs from my campaign from each person's perspective. Ardent's perspective was on Light and Shadows, while Tiria's was on Dreams and Dragons.
• Outside of that, I did a little more work on Blood in the Earth/Soil, which mostly consisted of finishing up the scene I'd been working on and then writing the first line of the next scene. (That next scene is what I've been working on during break; it's going well. One of the sisters who hasn't been in the spotlight much gets to play a bigger role and interact with Eun-Ji, plus plot stuff is set in motion. It's great.) I also toyed with another writing project, but ended up dropping it because it conflicted with a different novel (or novella) that I plan to write in the future.

Reading!

• I did a little better with reading this month than I did last month, which is good. I finished up my reread of the Illuminae Files around the beginning of the month. Everything I said about them last month stands; they're excellent books and I anticipate coming back to them many more times. Also, can I reiterate how much I appreciate that the authors didn't give us a grimdark ending? Or grimdark anything, really? I think it's become almost a trend for endings of YA fiction to focus almost as much on what was lost as what was gained, but you really don't get that in this series.
• How To was also excellent! I think I may have enjoyed What If? just a little bit more, but I think How To is a little more helpful in certain respects. If you're a writer who tries to get some measure of scientific realism in your stories, I'd recommend picking it up; even though most of the advice is sarcastic, there is some genuinely useful information in here (especially if you tend to write dramatic, over-the-top villains).
• At the end of February and beginning of March, I did a little early celebrating of March Magics by rereading Charmed Life and The Many Lives of Christopher Chant (the first two Chrestomanci Chronicles, nicely contained in one volume) and Castle in the Air. I actually enjoyed both of the Chrestomanci books more this time around than I did the first time — which is saying something; I really like Chrestomanci. And Castle in the Air was, of course, delightful.
• Continuing the reread trend: Redwall's been on my mind on and off throughout February, so I decided to reread Lord Brocktree to see how it held up. The answer is "surprisingly well" — the prose and technical quality of the book are nothing special, but it's refreshing to read a book where the good characters are solidly good, the evil characters are truly evil, and friendship, bravery, and appreciation of life are celebrated so honestly. I'm toying with the idea of doing a Great Redwall Reread now and perhaps even blogging about it if I have time. We'll see.
• I also reread 101 Dalmatians after we watched the movie a few days ago. That one didn't hold up quite as well, but it was still fun. There are some delightful interactions that didn't make it into the movie. And, y'know, it's a fundamentally family-oriented story and we all know that I have a soft spot for those.
• In terms of nonfiction, I've spent the better part of the month slowly reading The Design of Everyday Things, which is, contrary to what I expected, not about the history behind how various ordinary items developed into their modern forms. What is it about? User-centered design, that's what. Is it giving me flashbacks to User Experience for the Web (aka my second-least-favorite PWID class)? Also yes. But it is actually a good book, and it's honestly relevant to some of what I want to do professionally, so I'm going to finish it or go down trying.
• Not reading but still bookish: I did participate in Jenelle Schmidt's February is Fantasy Month again, though not as extensively as usual. I did manage to sort of keep up with the Instagram challenge for a few weeks, which was fun.
• Finally, a quick update on how my reading goals are going! I've read twelve books so far this year, which puts me five books behind schedule, but I should be able to catch up without too much trouble, especially if I end up rereading Redwall — those aren't short books, by any means, but they go quickly. I've also only read one non-speculative-fiction book, but I'm in the middle of a second. I'm doing a bit better on reading older books — I've gotten in four of those. I mean, they're all middle grade-ish, and three of them are by Diana Wynne Jones, and pretty much all of them were published after 1956, but still. It's progress.

Watching!

• Once again, I haven't really watched much of anything this month; I've mostly been too busy. My roommate and I did watch the third episode of Avatar season 2, but that's pretty much it.
• Well, and my family rewatched 101 Dalmatians while I was home for spring break. That was quite fun. (That's why I ended up rereading the book as well.) It's kind of underrated, and if Disney tries to make a "live action" version of it like they did with Lion King and Lady and the Tramp, I shall be immensely annoyed. (I'm already annoyed about Lady and the Tramp, but there's nothing I can do about that.) Also, the art on older Disney movies? Gorgeous.
• (I also have a new appreciation for the title sequences of Disney movies after having taken graphic design classes. I know it's not exactly graphic design, but it's related, and yeah.)

Life!

• Most of this month was, to be honest, taken up by either classes, homework, or writing. As such, my main impression of most of it was of being busy and tired.
• (Not that classes and homework are bad things, of course. I actually got to design the branding for a fictional university for one of my PWID classes, and it was SO MUCH FUN. Like, yes, it was tiring and it took effort, but there's a reason I want to go into branding and marketing if at all possible.)
• My roommate and I did make it down to Orion to take advantage of their drink of the month and their Valentine's blooming tea special. So that was fun. The blooming teas look pretty cool, and they come in this adorable glass teapot and it made me quite happy. (Also quite warm, as it was snowing that day. I was distinctly displeased.)
• On an exciting note, I went to the spring career fair that Cedarville hosts and actually had several very good conversations! I'm not sure if anything will come of them, but I'm hopeful. And the companies that seem to have the highest potential would both mean I'd be spending a lot of time around engineers and scientists, which I would honestly be fine with and would probably even enjoy. (I mean, I already hang around STEM people a lot; why not continue the habit?)
• On a less exciting note, I officially stepped down as an Inklings workshop leader this month. This is a decision I've been contemplating for several months, and I finally made up my mind after the TDK Academic Integration Conference (which I'm not talking about here because it was largely frustrating for me for entirely personal reasons, but some good things did come out of it). My workshop group has only had one person regularly show up (other than me), and it's been frustrating for both of us — and workshop, in general, has been taking up more emotional and mental bandwidth than I can spare ever since the start of the school year. I feel bad about not seeing the year through, but I think that this was best for everyone (especially since the one person who did come to workshop can now move to a group with actually active people in it).
• I also spent several afternoons in Centerville so my roommate could take a series of exams that she needs to get into grad school. That wasn't great for my productivity, but it was a nice change of pace. And now she's done with that, and we celebrated with a trip to Lola's Mexican for chimichangas, which were, as always, delicious.
• And this past week, I've been home on spring break — thank goodness! I've enjoyed being able to relax and spend time with my family and not have anywhere particular to be. It's possible that I should have been more productive over break than I was, but at the same time, I've gotten a reasonable amount done, and I needed the chance to rest.
• As per the usual, being home meant trying a new sourdough recipe. This time, it was crusty sourdough rolls, and they turned out super well (as you may have seen on my Instagram). If not, behold the deliciousness:

March Plans

• I'm going back to my January writing goal of 300 words or 30 minutes of writing per day, five days per week. 500 wasn't unbearable, especially with how much I was writing D&D stuff, but I think this will be more manageable. Plus, next month is Camp NaNoWriMo, so I don't want to exhaust my writing inspiration in March and then have nothing left when April hits.
• I also have lots of books to read, especially since I've gotten ahold of ARCs for several upcoming releases: the Wingfeather Saga rereleases, Moonscript, and Let the Ghosts Speak! I think this is the most ARCs I've ever had at one time, haha. (On the downside, I'm behind on the Wingfeather Saga ones because I can't figure out how to get the ARCs from Netgalley to my Kindle. The emailing thing doesn't seem to have worked. It's a problem.) Plus, of course, I have plenty to reread, and I may try to join in with the Fellowship of Fantasy book this month. We'll see.
• More importantly than either of those: classes still exist. I want to have my Honors final project at least drafted, if not completely done, by the end of the month, and there's the usual deadlines in other classes as well.
• In terms of social activity: D&D will continue to be a thing. Also, my friend group is doing a second cheese night the night we get back to Cedarville, and I'm psyched about that. And part of the TDK Quizbowl group — myself included — is going to a tournament at the end of the month, which I'm really looking forward to. (Not just because that means I get to be back in Virginia for a weekend, but also because it's going to be fun.)

How was your February? How do you feel about rereading books you used to love? What movie do you never want to see Disney remake in "live-action"? What plans do you have for March? Please tell me in the comments!
Thanks for reading!
-Sarah Pennington

January 2020: First DOINGS of the DECADE!

Hey'a, everyone! It is the last day of January and a Friday, and that means it's time for the first Doings post of the decade! WOOT WOOT. I have no idea why I'm making such a big deal about this, but it's something different, so we're going with it. Anyway. January's been one of those months where it feels like it's actually two or three months stuck into one, so that's been interesting. We'll see how much I remember to recap.

Writing!

• So, as far as writing quantity goes, I'm doing great. My goal was 300 words or 30 minutes of writing per day, five days a week, and though the start of the month was a little rough, I had some really good days and I currently have a really nice streak going. My total for the month so far is 24,214 words, not counting whatever I write today.
• The majority of that has been on D&D stuff, both because that has a closer deadline (I need to have a new session every Friday) and because D&D is currently easier to write than my novel. Around the beginning of the month, I planned out all the episodes for the semester, so I just have to expand my summaries into actual playable session outlines.
• I've gotten some done on Blood in the Earth/Soil, but not as much as I'd like. Again, D&D is higher priority and easier, and all the bits of my novel that I'm really excited about seem very far away. I mean, yes, they'd be closer if I worked on the bits that I'm writing now, but . . . yeah. I did manage to finish one notebook and start a second, though, which is exciting!
• (D&D is going great, though. We've had two sessions so far this month — we had to call off one because of someone's birthday — and everyone seems to be having a good time. And I'm putting Plans in motion, and everyone just hit level 5 and it's all very exciting for me.)

Reading!

• I really haven't read a lot in January — I've been knitting, and I haven't had many gaps between classes and such in which to sneak a few chapters.
• I finished King of Scars literally the day before Christmas break ended, and I have kind of mixed feelings about it. In all fairness, I really should have realized that, no duh, reading Nina's POV would be a constant reminder of that one bit at the end of Crooked Kingdom that I really disliked. Somehow, Zoya ended up being the best POV character in the story, which is impressive given how much I disliked her in the original trilogy.
• Two of my other main reads were retellings: Shadowkeeper (Hades and Persephone crossed with Castor and Polux) and A Curse So Dark and Lonely (Beauty and the Beast). Shadowkeeper was a great concept with an execution that was ok but could have been better (though it's still worth the 99 cents that it currently costs as an ebook). A Curse So Dark and Lonely has been on my TBR list for a while and is definitely one of the better Beauty and the Beast retellings I've read. The characters were great, and, wonder of wonders, people actually tried to communicate with each other after they argued instead of being huffy and stubborn. WILL WONDERS NEVER CEASE. Also, it's excellently twisty.
• I'm finishing up the month by rereading the Illuminae Files, which I intended to do over Christmas break but didn't have time to read. I thought I'd just hold off on them until my next break, but then I ended up with a spare hour Monday afternoon during which I was too tired to do anything productive, and I was right next door to the library, so I figured I'd see if they had the first book . . . and they did, so I reread it in three days, and it was just as good as I remembered it. I think the reread was made better not just by the fact that I could pick up hints and clues and such but also by the fact that I took the AI class last spring and watched 2001: A Space Odyssey as a part of that, so I was reading the bits about AIDAN kind of in light of what I'd gotten then. I'm currently partway through Gemina, which is also as excellent as I remembered. (Actually better, since I'm attached to Nik this time around.)
• I'm also keeping one of my reading goals and reading outside the speculative fiction genre! Currently, I'm reading How To: Absurd Scientific Advice for Common Real-World Problems, which is the most recent book by Randall Munroe (aka the guy behind XKCD and What If?). It is, as you might expect, excellent and hilarious and highly enjoyable. Absolutely would recommend.

Watching!

• I really didn't watch a whole lot this month. I saw about two-fifths of The Scarlet Pimpernel (the one with Ian McKellen in it) and thought it wasn't bad, though I didn't get to the part that I actually wanted to see (aka the part that's the book proper and not the flashback material put in chronological position). It was long and late and I wasn't feeling well, though, so I didn't finish.
• The roommate and I have also started watching (rewatching in her case) season two of Avatar: The Last Airbender. We've gotten through the first 2 episodes, which includes the "Cave of the Two Lovers" episode. That . . . was a thing. Also, Sokka in that episode is basically me during a lot of D&D.

Life!

• In case anyone was curious: the homemade artisan bread that I was working on when I posted my last Doings post was delicious. The loaves fused oddly, which wasn't great, but they tasted amazing. Definitely going to make those again once I'm home.
• But there will not be any baking for a while because, guess what, I'm back at Cedarville.
• For my last semester.
• Please insert the appropriate nervous screaming noises here. (If you've lived in the same dorm as me for any length of time, you probably have a pretty accurate idea of what that sounds like.)
• Anyway, yes. It's my last semester. I'm enjoying most of my classes, and even the two classes that I'm not crazy for, I like the people there and I'm glad to be taking one last class with them, if nothing else.
• But I'm basically in two web design classes (Web Design II and my independent study) and it's a lot, but I'm really enjoying it. Coding and scripting and such are weirdly satisfying in a way that graphic design and writing aren't, and I can't really explain why, but yeah. It's great. I like it. There's about a 30% chance that I'm going to find a way to work these skills into my PWID professional project (read; basically a pre-capstone project), though it kind of depends on what my professor and I decide.
• I'm also back in a class where the amount I talk during discussions actually affects my grade, and it's surprisingly hard to adjust after a full semester (possibly a full year?) with no classes like that.
• Outside of classwork: my roommate got Sentinels of the Multiverse (aka one of my favorite strategy games ever) for Christmas, so we've been playing that a fair bit whenever we both have a decent chunk of spare time. I've gotten to test out different heroes, which is fun. My favorites are definitely Fanatic (basically a paladin with wings; she smites evil a bunch and occasionally heals people) and Chrono-Ranger (time-traveling cowboy and bounty hunter whose effectiveness is directly proportional to how many bounties he has out at any given time). I've also determined that how much I enjoy playing a character is determined as much by aesthetic as it is by mechanics.
• My online D&D group is also still going strong. We had some MAJOR REVELATIONS dropped on us, not last session but the session before that, and some of us are still processing that, but we have a very clear objective in front of us right now, which is nice! And it does not involve negotiating with dragons other than the one in the party! Which my character is very happy about!
• Also this month was CU Lead, which is a leadership conference that all org officers are required to go to. It was not a fabulous day — it rained, some of the vital conference information was only available in an app that I couldn't download, and there were a lot of people. But it was a lot more helpful than last year's conference, with more practical advice and less theory and devotional-type stuff, so that's good.
• Additional not-terrible thing: CU Lead was the Saturday before MLK Day, and for the first time ever, we got MLK Day off from classes. So we had that day to make up all the homework and social stuff we didn't have time for on Friday, at least. And the chem club had a game night that evening, which was fun. (Oddly, the chem club game night was more fun than the Inklings game night this past week, even though I knew fewer people by far. I think it has to do with the personality dynamics of the people in the club.) And my roommate and I went to the Mexican restaurant down in the town for lunch, which was completely and utterly delicious.

February Plans

• I have two basically-final projects that I plan to start this month (my Honors colloquium project and my aforementioned professional project) and it's so weird to think about that. Plus, of course, I have the usual projects and reading and such.
• Writing-wise, I plan to keep going with roughly the same goal as I had this past month, but I'm upping the amount a little to 500 words or 30 minutes of writing, 5 days a week. I could probably go even higher if I wanted to, but I don't want to overdo anything, especially since I don't know how much time class projects will take up.
• That writing, by the way, will hopefully include at least one, maybe two, Valentine's Day short stories (because it sounds like fun and I currently don't get to write any romantic scenes in my WIP). Watch for more about that on my Facebook page sometime today or tomorrow.
• February also means Blind Date with a Book at the Cedarville University library, which I am super psyched for! I'm curious how they're going to handle it this year, but I'm sure it'll be great. I'm going to read so many books this month, haha.
• Outside of that, D&D and orgs and such will probably proceed as per the usual. I do have a couple D&D and other tabletop RPG one-shots that I'm either running or participating in, which I'm excited for. (The one-shot I'm running is set in Eberron, which means I get to be steampunky and I get to mess around with an artificer NPC, so that'll be super fun.)
• And, yeah. That's pretty much it. But I think it should be plenty to keep me busy.

How was your January? Have you been able to keep any of your resolutions or goals from the start of the New Year? What plans do you have for February? Please tell me in the comments!
Thanks for reading!
-Sarah (Leilani Sunblade) 

October 2019 Doings!

Hello, everyone! So, October. It's been a crazy month, let me tell you. I mean, that is the whole point of this Doings! post, but yeah.

(Also, I just got back from a Halloween party about an hour before I finished this post, and I'm still so hyped. Tired, but hyped. It was amazing. But more on that later!)

Writing!

• So, there's good news and there's bad news.
• And the bad news is that Blood in the Earth/Soil is most likely going to be delayed because I've barely had time and energy to work on it at all this month.
• I'm keeping up with creative nonfic all right . . .
• And I'm keeping up with D&D all right . . .
• But once I get through the week-to-week deadlines and my schoolwork and my various social commitments, there's not much energy left over for Eun-Ji, Azuma, Baili, Gan, Chouko, Xiang, and company. And I wish there was, and I hate that this is the spot I'm in, but I'm not sure what to do about it.
• (And I just added one more thing to my workload . . . but more on that later.)
• The good news, at least for me, is that my D&D campaign is still going well. Everyone seems to be having fun, and I think I've found a good balance between the plot of the week and the overarching storyline. And I've been able to introduce several NPCs who I really like (including one who's showing up tonight), so that's fun.
• (I also learned the importance of testing NPC names for possibly unfavorable mispronunciations — case in point, one of the NPCs last session was named Morin, and some of the players insisted on mispronouncing his name as "Moron." Oops.)
• The other good news is that next semester should be much less stressful, and hopefully, I'll be able to dedicate a lot more time to writing, which could mean extra stuff releasing to make up for the delay? But we'll see how that works out . . .

Reading!

• This was another light reading month, unsurprisingly.
• I did finish Northanger Abbey at last . . . and was not really impressed. The more I interact with Austen's books, the more I think that I'm not really an Austen fan; I'm a Pride and Prejudice fan. That said, there are a couple Austen books I haven't tried yet, so maybe I just don't jive with what I've read so far.
• I also reread Masque because I needed something to read and couldn't get at Prince of Stars, Son of Fate, plus you can't really go wrong with a Beauty and the Beast murder mystery. I have exactly 0 regrets, and it was honestly an excellent destresser.
• The last complete book I read this month was Ghostlight, another sort of magical mystery. It was interesting, but not my favorite thing I've ever read. I may read the sequel, but it's hard to say for sure.
• Finally, I'm currently reading the Thing Explainer, another Randall Munroe book. I feel a little weird whenever I'm reading it because it sometimes kind of feels like a kids' book, even though it's not a kids' book, and I can't help feeling guilty that I'm not reading something more sophisticated. On the other hand, I am enjoying it and I'm learning things, so I'm not about to stop reading it.

Watching!

• My roommate and I finished Season 1 of Avatar: The Last Airbender, as I mentioned a couple weeks ago. You can check out my season thoughts post if you missed it and are interested in reading my overall reactions as someone who knows a ton of spoilers and basically loved the show before she started watching it.
• We intended to watch a bunch of stuff (mostly Disney movies) over Fall Break, but that . . . didn't happen. I'm ok with that, except for the fact that we were going to watch Aladdin (the original, which I've never actually seen) and I was going to knit a bunch and I was kind of disappointed by the lack of both those things. But we played a ton of board games instead, so . . . worth it.
• And my roommate and I are endeavoring to pick Sword Art Online back up. We kind of skimmed past the Gun Gale Online arc because my roommate doesn't like most of it that much and I was . . . not super enthusiastic about the idea of watching it. As I mentioned to a friend of mine, Sword Art Online is kind of like the DC Dark Knight trilogy, in that it's deep and intellectual and thoughtful and people tell me it's really good and I should definitely watch it, and I want to take their advice . . . but it's also heavy and dark and doesn't have a ton of joy or humor to balance that out, and so even though I theoretically want to watch it, in practice, I avoid every opportunity I get to do so.
• But, as I said, we're past the GGO arc; we picked the episodes that my roommate liked best and watched those; I got a recap of the rest of the arc from her, and now we can move on to the remaining mini-arcs! Which I'm excited about!

Life!

I painted a pumpkin for a contest hosted by my campus bookstore. (It didn't win.)

• So, there are four main highlights of this past October: Parents' Weekend, fall break, academic decision crisis, and Halloween.
• We will start with the chronological first of those items: Parents' Weekend. This is also the easiest one to tell: the first weekend in October was Homecoming/Parents' Weekend, and my parents came up because it's my last year and my sister's first year and both of those are significant. Also, my sister was part of one of the Cardboard Canoe Race teams, so they wanted to support her in that, even though she wasn't actually in the boat. (Her boat did not win, but they did make it across without sinking, so all is well.) Getting to see them was super fun, and we got to go out to eat at Cheddar's, which is always a win.
• That weekend, I also went to Cedarville's production of A Comedy of Errors, which I enjoyed (though not as much as some of the other plays I've seen). The actors all did a very good job, and of course, Shakespeare is always great. Some of the mistaken identity humor did get old after a while, but overall it was good.
• After that, it was a fairly quiet-but-busy two weeks until . . .
• The academic decision crisis . . . which wasn't really much of a crisis, more of an opportunity that I had to decide whether or not to take. See, between the classes I've taken and the classes I plan to take, I'm only one class away from a web design minor, and it was bugging me . . . but I didn't think I could do anything about it because the class I needed was only offered in the fall semester, aka now, and I'm not sticking around an extra semester just to take one class. But my advisor encouraged me to email the professor in charge of the design department and ask if I could switch out the class for something else, so I did, expecting the answer to be no.
  • The answer was not no.
  • The answer was "I've talked to the professor who runs the class, and he remembers you from Web Design 1 and because he remembers you doing well in that class and really enjoying that class, he's willing to let you take this class as an independent study. But you have to start this semester, not next semester when you currently have a lighter workload."
  • So. That sparked a lot of debate and reassessing my plans and calling my parents and trying to figure out if the independent study is doable -- which I've decided it is, but only if I cut down on some non-class activities.
  • Thus why Blood in the Earth/Soil is being delayed.
• In the middle of all that was fall break, which was, honestly, delightful. Once again, I went to my roommate's house . . . but this year, we had my sister and her roommate along for the ride. That turned out to be really fun, as it meant we played a ton of board games.
  • A few of the board game highlights: multiple games of "Sentinels of the Multiverse" (in which I confirmed that my ideal playstyle is not support), two rounds of "Escape the Temple" (fun, but easily the most stressful game I've ever played, and not the best thing for when you're trying not to have a cold), and two games of "Mysterium" (including one in which I played as the ghost and learned that I like that much more than playing as a normal player -- it's a great game, but I get frustrated when I'm trying to work through the clues I'm given and everyone else is talking around me and telling me what I should think).

• • My sister and I also went to the Columbus Zoo with our aunt, which was really fun. We got to ride a camel (I can definitely tell why they're called ships of the desert) and we saw absolutely adorable arctic foxes!!! They were so white and pretty and fluffy and were basically my favorite part. The cheetahs were pretty cool as well, though.
• Then we got back, I had a super stressful week in which I had to do aaaaalllllllll the graphic design, and then reached this week. Which, of course, is Halloween!
  • To make it clear, I am excited about Halloween solely because it's an opportunity to dress up, not for any other reason. I have no interest in the spooky side of the holiday.
  • But, yeah. I basically managed to have Halloween events every night of Halloween week except Monday, which meant I got to wear all the costumes!

 

• • Tuesday: PWID Halloween party. I dressed up as a dragon keeper from the DragonKeeper Chronicles. As usual, no one knew what I was. As usual, I did not win. But I got to walk around with a sword on my hip and a dragon on my shoulder, and I got to eat cinnamon pretzels and caramels, and I got to meet my professor's baby, so I call the evening a success.
  • Wednesday: Inklings creative writing org, with costumes welcome. I thought about trying to be a Jedi this evening, but stuff didn't work out, so I went back to the classic assassin look. (Specifically, I was a Shadowwalker assassin from one of my to-be-eventually-published books, but I didn't advertise the specifics.)

• • Thursday, daytime: So I didn't exactly dress up, but I went with a sort of low-key Jedi-ish look and carried my lightsaber around in my backpack pocket, so I count that. Speaking of which, I have a lightsaber now. Like my sword, it's 3D printed. I still need to paint details on the hilt, but that's only going to be a little bit of work, and it wasn't significant enough that I felt the need to get it done before Halloween.

• • Thursday evening: Orion Halloween Hogwarts party! My roommate and I went to this together, and it was SO MUCH FUN. I did a whole post about the event over on Facebook and Instagram (pick the one you like better), so I'm not going to recap all the details here. That said, it was so much fun, I ate a ton of good food (including Orion's version of fever fudge, which is DELICIOUS and AMAZING), and I got to dress up AGAIN. This time, I was a Hogwarts alum who works with dragons. It was probably my most comfortable costume of the week (with the exception of my low-key Jedi one), but also had the most small fun details. And I got a Hogwarts letter! Which was awesome!

• • Friday evening: AKA tonight, AKA a time that has not occurred as of the writing and publishing of this post. But I've invited people in my D&D group to dress up, and I'm planning on wearing my capelet at least and having my dragon on my shoulder, so it will be a good time.
• Outside of those three things, most of October has been occupied by schoolwork, mostly graphic design. I'm currently in a group project in one of those classes, and it is not my favorite thing, but it's the only group project of the semester, so I'll deal with it.

November Plans!

• So, you may be asking "Sarah, if you're delaying your WIP and taking this independent study, will you still have time for NaNoWriMo?" And the answer is . . . not really. But I'm doing it anyway with a rebel goal of one creative nonfic piece and one D&D episode written and edited per week. Aka, I'm doing the stuff I need to do anyway, but at a slightly faster rate. And then if I have time around those things, I'll work on my WIP as well.
• On a side note, if you have been able to find the NaNoWriMo banners and profile things, please point me in their direction, 'cause I'm kind of lost on the new site.
• The other part of the main November plan is "do all the graphic and web design."
• Seriously, though, basically every weekend in November is going to be occupied primarily with my independent study. It's going to be great (I say only slightly sarcastically; I am really excited for this class).
• In my spare time (such as it is), I hope that my roommate and I will be able to keep watching either Avatar or Sword Art Online; I'd like to finish a season of something by the end of the semester. We'll see how that works out.
• I am planning to go home for Thanksgiving break, which I look forward to. I miss being home. This will also be my and my sister's first drive of that length when we're not following our parents, so that's going to be exciting and mildly nerve-wracking. I'm hoping that we can leave super early Wednesday morning so I don't have to drive most of the way in the dark. We'll see how that works out.
• Also, there's a chance that the TDK Christmas party will end up being before Thanksgiving, and I am not happy about that. I have strong feelings about when Christmas is meant to be (AKA, only after Thanksgiving) and I hold to those feelings with a significant enough conviction that I will have an actual crisis of conscience if the party is before then. I'm an officer, so I have to go, but . . . yeah.

How was your October? What plans do you have for November? Are you doing NaNoWriMo? When do you think the proper time for Christmas celebrations and decorations is? And did you dress up for Halloween this year? Please tell me in the comments!
Thanks for reading!
-Sarah (Leilani Sunblade)

AUs I Wish Were Real: Movie & TV Edition

Hey'a, everyone! So, like many people, I really enjoy the concept of AUs. I think that a well-executed or well-conceived AU demonstrates how well people know particular characters (which is why I like to come up with AUs of my own stories as a character development exercise), and sometimes you can use AUs from a particular fandom as a jumping-off point for a completely new story. Plus, sometimes it's just fun to imagine how a story would be different if a particular thing changed. Today, I thought I'd talk about some of my favorite AU concepts, both ones I've come up with on my own and ones I've seen elsewhere.

AUs I Wish Were Real

1. A Merlin AU in which Merlin, Arthur, Morgana, and Gwen all have magic and are just running around trying increasingly desperate methods to hide it from one another, Uither, and everyone else. Eventually, Gwen finds out about everyone else because she's actually not completely oblivious (unlike the Pendragons), but she may or may not actually tell anyone. Gaius knows, probably, but everyone makes him swear not to tell anyone else. And at least one of the knights figure it out, but watching these four idiots run around trying to figure out how to solve Camelot's problem of the week without letting anyone figure out how they're doing these increasingly impossible things is amazing entertainment, so whoever knows just quietly helps hide it from Uither and has a good laugh over it.
   
   
2. An Avatar: The Last Airbender AU in which the elements are controlled via dance instead of martial arts-esque moves and so every time there's a fight, it's basically a dance battle with bonus element-throwing. This AU comes about entirely because 90% of Zuko's fighting moves look like breakdancing as it is, so they barely have to change anything there. And, let's face it, watching Zuko and Aang have a dance battle every couple episodes for two seasons would be hilarious.
3. A Marvel AU in which people actually communicate during Civil War, realize "Ok, many of us are overreacting" and proceed to work through their differences and not break up the team. Bonus points if this gives Tony enough energy to actually think about how he handles his sort-of-mentorship with Peter and gets his act enough together to be a proper mentor, thereby making all the IronDad headcanons more reasonable. (Seriously, though: I love IronDad headcanons and short fics on Tumblr, but there's so little grounding for them in the actual show that they feel more like AUs themselves.) Double bonus points if this leads to any variation on this post; triple bonus points if it leads to a variation on this one.
4. Another Merlin AU: Merlin, instead of being a peasant from some town I don't remember, is Arthur's half-brother. He still acts as some kind of attendant to Arthur, because he's more or less illegitimate and it's inconvenient to have a half-brother lounging around with no actual job, but it's less "servant" and more "advisor and future steward" or something similar. He still has magic, which he uses to get himself and Arthur in and out of trouble, but in this case Arthur figures it out early on and is thus much less hostile to magic in general. (Arthur still struggles with reconciling his father's attitude and his own knowlede, but yeah.) And, of course, the various villains try to pin stuff on Merlin, implicating that he's trying to clear his way to the throne, but Arthur, at least, knows better. 
   
   
5. I feel really bad for wanting this, but: an Avatar: The Last Airbender AU in which Aang doesn't survive the hundred years and, through a series of undefined events, Zuko ends up being the Avatar. I am a big fan of "the person you were looking for was you all along" plotlines, at least when done well. And Avatar!Zuko would be a goldmine for both really interesting internal conflict and comedy not based in secondhand embarrassment. I did actually find one fic that follows this premise, but it had Zuko figure it out too close to the start of the fic, and also the writing quality wasn't great, so I ended up not reading more than a chapter. Tragic. (That said, I may end up taking this AU concept and reworking it into an original story, so, yeah. We'll see what happens.)

Do you enjoy reading and imagining AU concepts? What are some of your favorites? Please tell me in the comments!
Thanks for reading!
-Sarah (Leilani Sunblade)

I Finished Season 1 of Avatar! (Ft. My Thoughts)

Hey'a, everyone! So, yesterday, my roommate and I finished season 1 of Avatar: The Last Airbender, so I thought it would be fun to do a post with my thoughts on the show so far. Obviously, I've already said some of this in my Doings! posts, but those are usually briefer, so, yeah. And I know that a lot of people reading this will probably have already seen the show and thought a lot of these things, but I do have a somewhat different perspective since I'm coming in knowing a ton of spoilers. So hopefully that's interesting.

Thoughts on Avatar Season 1

1. As someone who knows spoilers, the characterization in this show is great. I can definitely see the seeds of who the characters are going to become in who they are now, and it's really fun to be able to spot the defining moments in a way that I couldn't if I didn't already know so much about the show. And I think the show also does a really good job of creating characters whose positive and negative traits are stemming from the same core trait or value, just expressed in positive and negative ways, which I really appreciate. Also, the relative lack of maturity in a lot of the main characters is surprisingly non-frustrating — though that may also come from the fact that I know who the characters will become. (For the record, I normally find characters with these guys' level of impulsiveness mildly frustrating.)
2. On a related note, I'm having a really hard time picking favorite characters because I don't know if I'm basing my choices on who they are now or who I know they're going to become. Like, obviously I really enjoy Zuko and Iroh (especially Iroh; I like him a little more with every episode, I think) — but would I like Zuko as much as I do if I didn't know who he becomes? I don't know. And I think Suki is amazing, but is that based solely on the one episode she's in, or is it based on that plus what I know of her from the fandom? Again, I don't know. (I do know that I like Sokka more than he deserves right now — I enjoy his sarcasm and the fact that he's kind of acting as the One Sane Man, but I think his character flaws might outweigh those characteristics if I didn't know how he matures.)
3. That said, I can say with absolute certainty that the Kyoshi warriors are awesome and I would almost certainly watch a whole spin-off series about them. (I say almost because in this day and age, while they might get the show very right, they might also get it very wrong in various directions.) But yeah. They're cool, they're skilled, and they very nicely avoid the two camps a lot of female warrior-types fall into. They're not trying to avoid their feminity; they take pride in it. But their feminity isn't conflated with sexiness — and the fact that it's technically a kid's show helps here a lot, but there are probably a lot of shows that would still get it wrong.
4. I'm also really enjoying the world in which the show is set. It's clear that the show-writers thought about the world they were creating and were very intentional with how they created it and, as far as I can tell, with how they presented the different cultures in light of the real-world cultures they're based on. And I like that the world isn't solely ancient or medieval. You have many medieval elements, but you've also got the Fire Nation ships and the steampunk-ish technology in "The Northern Air Temple" that show that the world is developing and changing and growing.
5. I will admit that some of the Eastern spiritual stuff is kinda weird. In the context of the show and the culture, it makes sense, of course. And in most episodes, it doesn't feel that much different from the stuff you'd find in some other fantasy media. The finale did seem to have a little more of that than the other episodes, but yeah. It's not a problem; it's just different from what I'm used to. (Also, note on the final: so, I thought I knew what happened with the moon spirit? And I did know the basics of what happened? But it played out in a very different way than I expected. So, yeah. That's a thing.)

What are your thoughts on any of this? Also, if you frequently watch movies or shows for which you know spoilers, how do you feel that changes how you view characters? Also, do you like this "5 thoughts on [show]" type of post enough that you'd like to see more of them? Please tell me in the comments!
Thanks for reading!
-Sarah (Leilani Sunblade)

September 2019 Doings!

Hey'a, everyone! So, I was super worried that this post was going to come out a day late because this has been a busy week and will be a busy weekend . . . but I actually managed to finish up the post earlier on Thursday than I normally do! Success! It helped that September, despite being super busy, had less bloggable busy stuff than August did — but there's still plenty to report.

Writing!

• Ok, so for one thing, graphic design classes are super time-and-energy-consuming, so I haven't had half as much writing time as I would've liked.
• And when I do have writing time, I typically have to spend it on creative nonfiction rather than novels. I'm sure my cnf professor is thrilled about that, but I'm not.
• And on top of that, I managed to work myself into a wall on cnf for over a week, so I wasn't writing my novel because I wasn't allowing myself to work on it if I hadn't done some nonfiction writing in the last 48 hours, but I also wasn't doing any nonfiction writing because I either hated the idea so much that I kept putting it off or I would work for ages and end up just starting the same piece over five times because it wouldn't come out close enough to right to be editable.
• There was at least one point where I really just wanted to tear the pages out of my notebook and throw them into the sun. Not going to lie.
• On the upside, I think that between what I have drafted and what I have edited, I have the required number of pages for the first actual turn-in-an-assignment date.
• Now I just have to catch up on my novel . . .
• On the upside, the D&D campaign I'm running is going well! We've had two sessions so far, and everyone seems to be enjoying themselves. We have learned that my brain sometimes shuts down in the middle of character dialogue (accidentally creating the impression that the character is struggling for words in a suspicious way) and that my group has terrible luck with spiders (spider-related combat always ends up taking longer than it seems like it should), but otherwise, it's great. My plan of using a laminated grid battle map and gumdrops for enemies seems to have worked out well — I'm more easily able to keep track of distances, and the players get excited when they're able to eat the enemy gumdrops.

Reading!

• So, the good news: you know XKCD? The stick figure science webcomic? I finally got around to reading one of his books: What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions! And it's magnificent and awesome and really fun! And I need his new book to come in at the library! (With my luck, it'll come in over Thanksgiving break . . .) There's lots of sarcasm and humor and explosions all wrapped around actual science and I can't believe I didn't read it sooner.
• H.L. Burke's new-ish book, Daughter of Sun, Bride of Ice, is pretty great too. I will admit that the romance kind of overshadowed the plot at times, but it wasn't too bad, and I'd read enough snippets on Facebook that I was already invested in the romance. Also, I really enjoy the world — it's tidelocked, so you've got a sunward side that's all desert and a spaceward side that's all cold and snowy and stuff, and it's just really cool and well-done.
• On the downside, I'm trying to read Northanger Abbey and I'm stuck about a third of the way through and it's a problem. In theory, I want to read it, but in practice, there's no plot and I'm not invested enough in the characters for the lack of plot to be unproblematic. I kind of want to DNF it, but I also feel guilty about wanting that (I mean, it's Jane Austen), and as long as I'm in the middle of it, I feel vaguely guilty about starting any other books . . . gah.

Watching!

• My roommate and I watched all but the last two episodes of the first season of Avatar: The Last Airbender! And it's awesome!
• We would've watched the last two as well, but then we both got sick and I got busy and we had to return the DVDs to the library. It was tragic.
• But I'm really enjoying the show! Zuko is probably my favorite character, which should come as a surprise to no one. All the major characters have really good characterization, though, and I don't dislike any of them. (Well, except for two. But I'm pretty sure I'm supposed to dislike both of them.)
• Outside of Avatar, I haven't really watched anything . . . well, not unless you count YouTube videos. (That said, I did discover someone's D&D story series, and it's kind of awesome — it started with accidentally causing an almost-apocalypse with karaoke and wild magic, and it just got better from there. Also, Zee Bashew's animated spellbook is pretty fun.)

Life!

• This is always the hardest section; I don't have as clear a record of life stuff as I do of anything else, and I think half my memories get overwritten before they're fully formed.
• Anyway. That said: what happened this month?
• The biggest thing that happened was probably the Ren Faire. I ended up going by myself this year — my roommate was sick, my sister didn't want to spend the money, and my other friends were busy. It was still fun, though! I got to wander around at my own pace, I watched the joust (and the knight for my side won, whoo!), I ate fish and chips, I bought cool necklaces as souvenirs. It was a good time.
• The same weekend as the Ren Faire was the TDK Kickoff Party, which went pretty well! We had a much better food situation than last year, and we reorganized the schedule in a way that I think worked better. (Namely, it allowed people to eat close to the start of the party instead of all the way at the end.)
• The weekend after the Ren Faire, my friends and I went to the local sunflower fields to take portraits. Although pictures in the sunflower field is kind of a stereotypical Cedarville activity, only one of the people in our group had gone before. I was excited for a chance to take pictures of my friends at their request, and I think the pictures turned out pretty well. I still need to edit them, but yeah.
• And then social activities kind of crashed to a halt the week after that because my roommate got sick again and I got hit in the face with allergies and it was not a good time.

• Classes are going fairly well, though I spend more time feeling overwhelmed than I'd like. My two graphic design classes are uncomfortably synced so big assignments are due on the same days, and that's kind of frustrating (especially since it cuts into the time I'd like to spend on other classes, namely nonfiction). That said, I made a cube! So that's cool.
• I already mentioned the D&D campaign I'm running, but I would also like to mention the fact that in the D&D campaign I'm playing in, we just fought a whole army of drow and met up with the Big Bad of the campaign. Who then proceeded to congratulate us on how well we killed those drow and to thank us for dealing with them so he didn't have to. Cue indignant sputtering from my neutral-good-paladin-self and considerable confusion from our rogue, whom we apparently didn't fill in on the situation as well as we thought we did. Oops.

• I also accidentally drank coffee in the form of a specialty drink that people told me was frozen hot chocolate. It was, as it turned out, a frappucino. I am neither pleased nor impressed.

October Plans!

• I'm hoping really hard that the graphic design workload will slow down a little so I can do more writing of both fiction and nonfiction. I'm still holding out hope that my 12DP retelling will be done in time to publish with the Arista Challenge again, but it looks like it's going to be tight. And I'm torn between "hurry and write as much as possible so you can edit in November for NaNo," "don't overdo it or you'll burn yourself out and not be able to do NaNo," and "do you really have time for NaNo anyway?" I should probably listen to that last one, honestly.
• I have the next couple D&D sessions planned, though only one is fully written. They're going to introduce some of my favorite NPCs that I've created so far, and I think they'll be really fun for everyone. Hopefully I'm right.
• I'm also really looking forward to fall break! I'm going to my roommate's house, as usual, and this year my sister and her roommate are coming too. It's going to be a little crazy, but hopefully still fun. The current plan is homework, animated movies (Disney and/or Studio Ghibli), board games, and possibly some crafting; we'll see what actually happens.
• And, of course, the end of October means Halloween! I'm super disappointed that my dorm probably won't have any Halloween events, but my major will still have its party. My cloak is coming along reasonably quickly, so I'm hopeful that it will be done in time for the party. (If not . . . eep. I'll figure something out.)

How was your September? What plans do you have for October? Have you read Northanger Abbey, and if so, does it ever develop a plot? What books have you gotten stuck on and then felt guilty about? Please tell me in the comments!
Thanks for reading!
-Sarah (Leilani Sunblade)

August 2019 Doings!

I'm back from my hiatus at last! It probably wasn't the greatest marketing choice to disappear for so long right after my release . . . but I did need the break. August was another weird mix of really chill and "I'm DYING," and yeah. It was interesting.

Writing!

• Mechanical Heart is officially out, and the release went really well overall! Y'all seem to like it, which makes me happy. (That said: if you've read it, please leave a review, especially on Amazon. Currently there's just four reviews over there . . . though they're all good reviews, so that's great.)
• (Also, Kyle Robert storming Shultz read my book and liked it and I still can't quite believe that's a thing that happened. I screamed a little when I found out, not gonna lie.)
• August was not a great writing month, let me just say.
• I don't actually know how much I wrote, but I do know that it wasn't enough.
• I did have an excuse, though. It's called "Work, packing, school, and more work." Also, certain scenes ended up dragging ooooonnnnn and oooonnnn and it got to the point where I was like "I don't want to write this; I will do literally anything that's not writing this." I will have to find a way to make them more interesting in edits. (Or I may find out that they aren't actually that long and they just feel long because I didn't want to write them . . . not sure.)
• Oh, and I did some creative non-fiction pieces for my cnf class, and I think some of them turned out pretty well. I may post them on the blog eventually, but we'll see.
• On the upside, some of my characters got nominated in the Silmaril Awards! Breen and Baili are both up for Most Epic Heroine, and Luis and Grace are contenders for Most Faithful Friend. I don't really expect them to win, but I'm really happy that people like them enough to nominate them! (And there are still a few more days to second nominations, so . . .)

Reading!

• August wasn't a half-bad reading month, though it wasn't as great as the start of the summer.
• The Game was probably my favorite read of the month, as should not be surprising since it's by Diana Wynne Jones. It was really short and wrapped up a bit quickly, but it was a very clever take on mythology and just a good story all 'round. Oath of the Outcast was another great book; though I found the lack of female characters a bit disconcerting, I liked the characters and plot and focus on family and friendship. And Descendent of the Crane was great right up until it tore my heart into tiny pieces and then told me that it was actually the first in a series, so that's a thing. I do recommend it — it's a great fantasy-mystery with a bonus helping of "suddenly ascended ruler trying to figure out how to do the rulership thing" and a topping of family drama and relationships. The ending just hurts. A lot.
• I also enjoyed Savannah Jezowski's short stories, "The Witching Hour" and "The Hounds of Darkness." They're both solid short stories, and I appreciate how effectively Savannah can write from a cat's perspective. I'm not sure how I feel about the ending of Hounds, but that's a me thing.
• One tier down: three books that were good, but not as great as I hoped. Not Write Now was an interesting book of writing advice from Kyle Robert Shultz, and I feel like it's worth a read if you want to readily identify the ways you can accidentally (or purposefully) set yourself up to fail as a writer. Storms, it's probably worth getting just for the prologue/introduction. That said, it wasn't as effective for me personally as it might be for other people. Match Cats was a cute anthology of romance shorts from the perspective of both cats and owners . . . which is fine, but fluffier than I wanted. And The Atlas of Cursed Places was slightly less helpful for location inspiration than I thought it would be, but it was still a pretty interesting read that nicely balanced history, philosophical musing, science, and imagination.
• Last, we have my first DNF in a while: Peasprout Chen: Future Legend of Skate and Sword. I picked this up on a whim, thinking "Oh, hey, this looks like fun!" Spoiler alert: it was not fun. I gave up about three or four chapters in. I couldn't stand Peasprout — she's too arrogant, and too dismissive of her younger brother, and just too frustrating all around.
• I did acquire some lovely books, mostly via giveaway! From Emma of Awkwordly Emma, I won Empress of All Seasons, Sorcery of Thorns, and Truly Devious, all of which I'm super-excited to read but haven't quite gotten to yet (mostly because library books took precedence). From C.M. Banschbach, I won Oath of the Outcast . . . twice. Thanks to a mix-up somewhere along the line, I accidentally received two copies. (Not that I'm complaining! Now I have a copy to give to someone . . . as soon as I figure out who.)
• Oh, and I read roughly sixteen volumes of Schlock Mercenary, thanks to the recommendation of Matthew Sampson. I'm not sure whether or not to thank him. On one hand, the storyline is great. You have to get past some off-color humor, particularly in the first few books, but the craft, characterization, and worldbuilding are spot-on. I just found out that the author does the Writing Excuses podcast along with Brandon storming Sanderson, and I am exactly zero percent surprised.

Watching!

• In keeping with last month's theme, my family and I finished our John-Wayne-watching with True Grit, which was actually really good and I would've watched ages ago if someone had properly explained how great it was, focusing on the things that I'd actually get excited about. (Which is to say: strong-minded female protagonist who knows what she wants and won't let anyone stop her from going after it, and a wonderful example of the "grizzled, cynical loner accidentally adopts small naive newbie-adventurer." Also, lots of snark and no stupid pointless romance.) Maddie did act like a bit of a brat at times, but it wasn't too bad. And while the ending was a bit odd, the movie on the whole was solid.
• We also watched The Sting, which was a heist movie set in 1920s Chicago-ish area. And it was fine, just very slow. I think I would have loved it if it were a book; as a movie, my natural impatience and my inability to tell similar faces apart made it a bit difficult. Still, great character development!
• On the TV-watching front: my roommate and I agreed that we needed to continue our Fairy Tail hiatus and that we weren't ready to start up SAO again . . . so we started watching The Librarians, which is pretty much about people who work for a magical library, trying to keep magic from being used for evil. It occasionally trips over cliches, but it's overall pretty fun. But we took a break from that too about four episodes in. Why? Because . . .

• We're watching Avatar: The Last Airbender! I've had this on my to-watch list longer than basically any other show, and I can say with confidence that it is worth the wait. We're about halfway through season one and I'm really enjoying the story and characters and the really good balance between humor and adventure and drama. And while certain characters are a bit annoying right now, there's no one who's unbearably frustrating, and it's sort of a more realistic annoying-ness rather than the stupid-annoying-ness of several characters in other shows I could name. Plus, I think that the show's doing a really good job of setting up stuff that's going to occur in the future, particularly with regard to character development.

Life!

• Ok, so obviously the main event this month was that I returned to Cedarville University for the start of my senior year. And that's been going fairly well so far. I'm pretty sure that this year is either going to be stupidly stressful or really chill. I have three different classes that seem like they'll be heavily creative: two graphic design and the creative nonfiction class I mentioned earlier. I'm excited for all of those, but they're also the ones that'll be hardest to keep up with because I want to get stuff right. In addition, I have Honors Colloqium (which has only met once because it's on Mondays and we get Labor Day off), Statistics for Business (which seems like it'll be pretty fun, if only because the professor is doing a great job of keeping class time intersting — though I also genuinely like statistics, particularly probability), and Professional Portfolio Development (which is basically "this is how you get a job, now go do it"). All in all, it's a solid lineup.
• My roommate and I did not make it to the Rennaissance Festival on Labor Day weekend like we usually do, but I did walk down into to town several times to hang out in the coffee shops and drink yummy things (and probably spend more money than I should, but OH WELL. I'm supporting small businesses). And I went to the pancake breakfast on Monday, which was delicious.
• (For those who aren't aware: Labor Day was basically invented by a person from Cedarville, so it's a Big Deal here. There's a parade and a three-day festival and everything. Plus the college students get the day off, which is great.)
• Plus, I'm the secretary for TDK again, so I'm keeping busy with that. We have our first QuizBowl day today, and our Kickoff Party is in a couple days, and I'm really excited for both things.
• And I played both Portal and Portal 2! Both were great, and I'm really sad that they're over. (Also, I'm sad that I can't go back and replay specific levels to try to get some of the achievements I missed . . . oh well. Maybe I'll replay the whole thing in a year or two.) Very good storytelling, especially in Portal 2, but also great puzzle challenges.
• Before Cedarville, not a ton happened . . . though I did finish my sword!

• I painted it, attached the hilt and blade, and put the wrap on the hilt literally two nights before we left for Cedarville. Things I have learned: (1) next time, print in the other direction, (2) spray paint, then craft paint, never just one, and (3) epoxy is interesting, but not as intimidating as it might seem.
• I also finally got my bread to the desired fluffiness, though never to the desired shape. My mom's still keeping it going, so maybe she'll have better luck eventually.
• Other than that . . . um . . . I have sometimes-glasses now. I noticed that the chapel slides were getting steadily harder to see, so we got my eyes checked and I'm basically on the border of needing glasses and not needing them. So I ended up getting them, but I mostly wear them during class and when I'm driving — I get headaches if I wear them too long, especially if I'm looking at screens. But, yeah. That's a thing. I put them on and I was like "Oh, huh, I didn't realize stuff was supposed to be sharp that far out!"

September Plans!

• I'm still hoping to make it to the Rennaissance Festival, hopefully this weekend. We'll see how that goes.
• Other than that: lots of schoolwork and org activities! I'm in two high-committment orgs (TDK and the Inklings) and then I'm in several other orgs where my committment is either "I'll come if I have time" or else "I'll be there at every meeting, but you only meet once a month, so we're chill." I am probably in too many things, but it's easier to test stuff out now and drop it later than to try to break into a new social group halfway through the school year.
• And, of course, there's D&D! The campaign I'm currently in is a bit . . . intersting . . . with regard to scheduling; half our members are off-campus, and we're meeting online still, and it's a bit of a mess. But it's still fun when we're able to meet. And then the campaign that I'm running should kick off pretty soon, maybe either next week or the week after if we can get stuff sorted out there.
• On the writing front, I really want to finish my WIP draft this month so I can take a little time off before I start the first round of edits (either in October or November, depending on how I'm feeling). And I have several creative nonfiction ideas that I want to get down at some point (and need to get down so i can turn them in, but yeah).
• As far as reading goes: I have very easy library access, and I have a shelf full of mostly not-yet-reads, all of which I'm excited about. As long as I have time (and as soon as I finish Northanger Abbey), reading this month will be great.

How was your August? What are your plans for September? Have you been doing any fun crafty things? Please tell me in the comments!
Thanks for reading!
-Sarah (Leilani Sunblade)