Hello, everyone! Spring is finally here (and the weather's actually cooperating with that statement), which means it's time for another season of reads! Now, I'm still way behind on my winter releases (and I'm sure I'm not the only one), but that's no reason not to be excited for more new books. After all, you can never have too many books. And this season actually has a lot of pretty promising releases, so let's get started!

Spring 2019 Reads!

1. The Opposite of Always by Justin A. Reynolds (March 5). Ok, so I normally avoid contemporary books unless I'm being paid to review them because, let's be real, if I want real-world angst, I can just walk outside and find the nearest awkward couple. But this one has time-travel in it, and . . . ok, it's a time-travel trope I'm a little iffy on. Still, I'd be willing to give it a try if I have time.

2. To Best the Boys by Mary Weber (March 19). I honestly thought this was a contemporary, just based on the title, and so avoided it on principle. Then everyone I knew abruptly started yelling on the internet about how good it was, and I decided that I'd better look into it. And what I found? Scientist girls, mysterious mazes, and potentially-deadly challenges. With all those factors in its favor, I just might have to pick this one after all.

3. Once and Future by Amy Rose Capetta and Cory McCarthy (March 26). It's a sci-fi King Arthur retelling! With a cranky teenage Merlin! (I'll bet you and anyone else five bucks that the authors took at least a little inspiration from the BBC Merlin.) I am, naturally, down for this. I might even buy it if it turns out really good, if only so I can shove it at my roommate and tell her to read it too.

4. We Rule the Night by Claire Eliza Bartlett (April 2). Y'know how I keep yelling about how I want more historical fantasy in unique time periods? We've got historical fantasy set during the Civil War, "complicated friendships" (yes please!), and spying! What more could I ask for? (Don't answer that.)

5. The Boy Who Steals Houses by C.G. Drews (April 4). And here we have one of the few authors whose books I'll read even if they are contemporary. I'm 99% certain that The Boy Who Steals Houses will make a mess of my emotions just based on what Cait Grace has said about it. All the same, I'm looking forward to reading more of her books and hopefully getting some cute found-family moments. We'll see!

6. Descendent of the Crane by Joan He (April 9). Asian! Inspired! Fantasy! I still haven't gotten to most of the books in this genre that came out this winter, but that just means I can binge-read all of it once I get home on summer break. It'll be fabulous. Also, reluctantly responsible rulers and murder mysteries are two of my favorite things. So, yeah, I can't wait to read this one.

7. The Tiger at Midnight by Swati Teerdhala (April 23). And now we've got Indian/Hindu mythology in the mix, which is probably going to be a wild ride, but I'm not complaining. We've got assassins, we've got politics, we've got masterminds . . . if it goes right, it'll be awesome. Admittedly, some things in the synopsis make me a little worried about whether or not it'll actually go right, but we can hope!

8. Romanov by Nadine Brandes (May 7). More historical fantasy! About Anastasia! Not that I know a whole lot about Anastasia, but still: historical! fantasy! In Russia! My reading list is deliciously multicultural, and I'm so excited. Plus, I've been meaning to read Nadine's books for ages — I have Fawkes on my shelf, but I just haven't had time, but maybe Romanov will change that.

9. We Hunt the Flame by Hafsah Faizal (May 14). Ok, we all know how this one's going to go — any time a young, reasonably attractive person in fantasy is sent to kill another young, reasonably attractive person, they end up falling in love and having to make semi-complicated moral choices. But the characters themselves sound interesting, and the last Arabian fantasy I read was beautiful, so I'm hoping for a repeat experience. We'll see how it goes.

10. The Kingdom by Jess Rothenberg (May 28). The first time I heard about this book, I passed it by. However, since I've been taking a class on AI this semester, I'm more interested in how modern media presents artificial intelligence and deals with the question of whether or not a program can be a person. With that plus the fact that this is a mystery, I think it's worth including on the reading list.

What reads are you most excited for this spring? Please tell me in the comments!
Thanks for reading!
-Sarah (Leilani Sunblade)

September 2018 Doings!

Hey'a, everyone! To start off, I'm going to make something official that I've been doing unofficially for a while. Going forward, Doings! will be posted the first Friday of every month instead of the first day of every month. I hope that this will help with blog scheduling (since I won't have to worry about what to do when the first is a Thursday, Friday, or Saturday) and that it'll reduce my stress level a little (because I won't have to worry as much about not getting Doings! up on the first day of the month). Thanks so much for understanding and for sticking with me.

So, now that that's out of the way, let's get on with the Doings!

Writing!

• The main thing I have to say about writing this month: thank God for the Inklings. (Not the Lewis-Tolkien-and-co writing group. I mean, thank God for them too, but not in this case.) When I joined the Inklings Writing Org, I wasn't sure how it would go or what it would look like, but so far it's been seriously awesome. And by that, I mean that I get an hour and a half every Wednesday to sit down and work on whatever writing project is in front of me, with other writers around me who are also writing and therefore providing extra motivation solely by their existence in the same space as me. It's fabulous.
• Also thank God for my creative writing hall-friend who helped me whip one of my Actual Writing Job short stories in shape, even if whipping it into shape meant totally rewriting the story from scratch. The new version is definitely better than the original that I was struggling with in my last Doings! post.
• In other news, it's release month for Blood in the Snow and the other Magic Mirrors stories! I'm super excited! I finally figured out ebook formatting, so huzzah for that! We're still looking for people to join in the blog tour, so if you have a blog and you're interested in helping out me and my five fellow awesome authors, feel free to sign up! You can interview an author, shine a spotlight on a character, feature an author guest post, or review a book. It's going to be super awesome and y'all should join in.
• On the topic of the blog tour: I commissioned character art for three of my characters, and I'm SO EXCITED. Like, I might be almost as excited for the art as I am for the actual book release. That might be because I still have work to do before the book release and I don't have to do work on the art, but y'know.
• Also: I have an official author website and an author Facebook page! Feel free to check both out and like, follow, all that! No worries; the website doesn't mean I'm abandoning or moving my blog. Dreams and Dragons is staying right where it is, at least for the moment. But I want to start off with an official site instead of waiting to create one. I also have an official author photo, which means y'all get to see my actual face instead of the back of my head. I think that's exciting, but I'm not completely sure.

Reading!

• . . . Well. That was spectacularly unimpressive.
• I don't even know why I read so few books. I know I could've fit at least one more in there. Oh well.
• I enjoyed everything I read, at least. Specter was a fun return to Savannah Jezowski's Neverway stories, though I didn't like it as much as Briarstone Abbey. A Thousand Perfect Notes, Cait Grace's new book, was one I'd been looking forward to for a while, and it was really good, though also pretty heavy. And The Electrical Menagerie was just as fun and exciting and steampunky as I hoped it would be, with a splendid mystery as the cherry on top!
• Not pictured is my current read: Hank Green's An Absolutely Remarkable Thing. I just started it yesterday, and so far, I'm not sure what to think. It's definitely very different from most of what I read, but I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing.

Watching!

• Whooooo. This has been a busy month in terms of what I've watched, unlike what I've read. It's also been a month full of a lot of new things, which is awesome!
• First and most important: I've finally watched some Doctor Who. And by "some" I mean episodes 1, 2, and 4 of season one. Several of the other girls were getting together to watch it because another girl hasn't seen any of it, and I had nothing else to do those nights, so . . . yeah. I can see why everyone loves it so much, though I don't think it's my favorite show I've ever watched. I'm also not sure why I hear so much about people not liking Nine, because so far? I quite enjoy him.
• On the anime front, my roommate and I made it through the Eclipse Spirits arc of Fairy Tail. I . . . did not entirely enjoy the arc. Like, there were some pretty cool scenes? But it ended up being one of those "If you would've actually TALKED instead of just throwing punches, you could've solved this problem much more easily!" situations. So, yeah.
• That said: Cana's card battle with Scorpio? LOVED it. That was probably my favorite part of the whole arc. And I'm reasonably satisfied with the ending, so there's that.

• Now we're taking a break from Fairy Tail and watching the first season of Sword Art Online, which is basically the roommate's all-time favorite anime. We've made it through the first three episodes, and I think I like it? It's definitely a very different tone, art style, and overall feel from Fairy Tail, which isn't a bad thing but does take some mental adjusting. I have to say that the artwork is gorgeous, and the concept and ideas it explores are fascinating. I'm just not sure about the characters, basically, or the lack of humor. I mean, can I at least get a properly snarky character or two? Is that so much to ask?
• I've also watched some stuff sort-of on my own, for once! My current 2D Design project is basically creating a bunch of paint swatches (which I'll then turn into a color wheel and a bunch of color progression stuff), which means hours and hours of sitting, mixing paint, and painting squares of color. It's a pretty mindless task, which means it's an excellent opportunity to watch stuff. I started by getting caught up on Overly Sarcastic Productions (sarcastic recaps and explorations of various myths, legends, and literature; I highly recommend it), but then I moved on to . . .

• Miraculous Ladybug! I've heard so much about this show from my friends and Pinterest that I was starting to get really curious, and since I had time, I decided to give it a try. The first episode nearly turned me off — I liked the powers, and I always love a good superhero story, but I wasn't so sure about the animation style or the characters themselves. But I decided to give the second episode a chance . . . and then the third . . . and the next thing I knew, I'd watched six episodes and probably would've watched a seventh if I wasn't so close to being done for the day. So, yeah, that's a thing.
• I also finally watched Mulan all the way through while working on the same project. Some of my classmates started playing it on the classroom TV during our actual class time (the professor wasn't there since it was just a workshop day), and, storms, why did I not put in the effort to watch the whole movie before? Great story, great characters, great everything really, and way fewer secondhand embarrassment scenes than I expected. I love it. What even.
• . . . Aaaaaand then my classmates decided to put on Shrek when we finished Mulan. So now I've seen the first twenty or so minutes of that, and let me tell you, I'm not terribly impressed. I'll probably end up seeing the rest of it during the next class, assuming that we just get another workshop day, but I don't anticipate liking it terribly much. I don't think it's my type of movie.
• But, y'know? I think Shrek is still outweighed by all the fun stuff I've watched this month, so I'm not complaining at all.

Life!

I did napkin-holder art and I'm very pleased with it.

• College as usual. Classes are keeping me pretty busy. On the upside, I've gone through two 2D Design projects and enjoyed both of them! Plus, I got to make basically a mini escape game for Marketing Communication and it was one of my favorite projects I've ever done. (Except for the bit where a 3D graphic element took literally seven times as long as it should've to come out right. That was annoying.)
• The main downside of this semester is that I have more group work now than I've had in the last two years put together. By that, I mean that three of my five classes involve some sort of semester-long group project (broken up into smaller projects due over the course of the semester). It's . . . challenging. I mean, none of the groups are horrible, and one of them is actually pretty great. But I haven't worked with the people in the other two groups before, so figuring out how to function well together and how to reconcile our different perspectives on some of the projects will take some time.
• On the upside, orgs are going swimmingly. I already raved about the Inklings, but the Studio org is also pretty awesome. It's basically an hour to work on 2D projects while surrounded by other (much more skilled and experienced) art and design people, and yeah. It definitely helped me through those first two projects I mentioned earlier. And, of course, the Honors org is as awesome as ever. As I mentioned last month, I'm the org's secretary this year, and it's basically the perfect position for me? I have a decent say when we're planning events, but I'm not in a really noticeable role like the president or freshmen integrators, and I get to use some of what I learn in my major classes! Yeah, it's pretty great.
• I also have the opportunity to join a D&D group, and I'm seriously thinking about going for it. D&D is something I've wanted to try for a while now, but I always end up a step or two removed from any groups. The only problem is that this particular group meets right after Honors Quizbowl, which means I'd have to stop eating dinner with the Quizbowl gang and that I'd miss at least an hour of D&D the last Friday of every month (when we have Honors org dinner). I'm not terribly stressed about the time commitment; I don't usually get a lot done on Friday evenings, and I just have to make sure I have Friday 5s up and ready on time. And, I mean, that's doable. This post was ready pretty well ahead of time; the only reason it's going up so late is that I wanted to announce my author website. But I'm not a fan of ditching my Honors friends if I can avoid it.
• In other news: so, freshman year, there was this little bakery in the town of Cedarville. They made quiche and scones and pastries and cookies and desserts and all sorts of delicious things, and my roommate and I loved the place immensely. Unfortunately, last year, one of the owners became seriously ill, and the bakery closed. We thought it was gone for good . . . until this month, when we discovered that the bakery is back under new ownership! We're both super excited, as you can imagine. (Also, this means that going into town on the occasional Saturday for breakfast will probably involve stops at every breakfast-related eatery in town — I love the chai tea and smoothies at one coffeeshop, my roommate prefers the coffee at a different shop, and we want breakfast from the bakery. I'm not complaining, but I do find it amusing.)
• Also: Jazz Band continues to be the best. That is all.

October Plans!

• Most of October will probably be occupied by three things: classes, publishing, and editing Mechanical Heart.
• On that note: Blood in the Snow comes out on the 26th! AHHHHHHHHH. So excited!
• I also want to try to read and review at least some of the Magic Mirrors books before then, but we'll see if that happens or not.
• But I have Fall Break before that! I'm planning to go to my roommate's house again, and there has been talk of much Marvel-movie-watching. Specifically, Black Panther–watching. (And also Ant-Man and Ant-Man and the Wasp, but we all know which of those I'm most excited for.)
• I also need to really get busy with figuring out a costume for Halloween. I've had ideas for months, but which of those ideas are doable remains to be seen. Part of the problem is that I want to go as someone or something recognizable for my major's Halloween party because I'm tired of putting together awesome costumes that garner only blank, vaguely impressed looks. (I'm thinking about trying to do something based on a writing pun at this point? But I'm blanking on ideas. It's very frustrating.)
• And, of course, there'll be reading and watching-of-awesome-shows. It'll be a good time, hopefully.

That's it for my month. What about yours? How was your September? Any fun plans for October? Please tell me in the comments!
Thanks for reading!
-Sarah (Leilani Sunblade) 

Summer 2018 Reads

Hey'a, everyone! This post is going up a bit later than it normally would, due to the Song of Leira and Lightporter blog tours. But that's ok, since those served the same purpose this post would've: to let you know about all the awesome books I'm excited for in this season of reading!

Summer 2018 Reads!

1. Song of Leira by Gillian Bronte Adams (June 5). I've already talked about this one, obviously, and I've also already read it . . . but I'm still super excited that it's out! It's definitely the high point of the trilogy, and I'm impressed by Gillian's ability to convey powerful themes without being preachy. If you haven't read it yet, go do so.

2. Bring Me Their Hearts by Sara Wolf (June 5). Maybe a little darker than I normally read, but it sounds like it could be fun. We all know how it's going to end (you'd think that people would stop sending female assassins after handsome, single male princes; they always end up falling in love instead) but finding out how it ends up there will hopefully be enjoyable.

3. The Bird and the Blade by Megan Bannen (June 5). Mongolian historical fantasy— yes, please! And I think it might be a retelling of a myth as well, but I'm not 100% certain. I need to brush up on my Asian mythology. Either way, it sounds magnificent.

4. A Thousand Perfect Notes by C.G. Drews (June 7). I don't usually read contemporary, but I'll make an exception for this book! It's by Cait Grace of Paper Fury, and she's awesome, so I expect A Thousand Perfect Notes will be as well. Unfortunately, it sounds like it's only releasing in the UK and Australia, but I still intend to get my hands on it somehow.

5. Lightporter by C.B. Cook (June 16). Again, I've already talked about this one a fair bit, so I don't have a lot more to say. Basically, there's more Blaze and Anvil (my faves!), Albany has grown up a little (yay!), and the plot's exciting and fun. Out of everything on this list, I think this is the most summer-y, so that's another reason to read it sooner rather than later.

6. The Janus Elixir by Kyle Robert Shultz (July 1). Assuming you read my Mid-Year Book Freakout, you know how much I love the Beaumont and Beasley books. The Janus Elixir, unfortunately, doesn't sound like it'll involve Nick, Cordelia, and Crispin much . . . but I'm not complaining, because Malcolm Blackfire is storming awesome. Also, Kyle currently has this free for newsletter subscribers, so go sign up for that. His newsletters are funny and infrequent, so you're not going to be instantly spammed.

7. Fawkes by Nadine Brandes (July 10). This one sounds like so much fun! It's historical fantasy about the son of Guy Fawkes (aka the guy who tried to blow up Parliament and got a holiday named after him for it), and I imagine it'll be delightfully exciting. Also, just saying, the cover is pretty awesome.

8. Kill the Farm Boy by Delilah S. Dawson (July 24). This is either going to succeed spectactularly or fail miserably. No in-between. I hope that it will be the former, because it has the potential to be a hilarious adventure in the same vein as Discworld and the Hero's Guide series . . . as long as it doesn't make the fatal mistake of only making fun of fantasy instead of celebrating the good in it as well.

9. Fairest Son by H.S.J. Williams (August ??). I've been following Hannah for ages and waiting for her to be ready to publish something. Fairest Son isn't what I was waiting for exactly (that would be Moonscript), but I am definitely not going to complain about a gender-swapped Snow White retelling, especially not one involving a fae Snow White. (My life has been growing steadily more and more full of fae-related books— and, more to the point, good fae-related books— and I love it SO MUCH.)

10. These Rebel Waves by Sara Raasch (August 7). This is either going to be piratey, political, mysterious magnificence or it's going to make me sad about the fact that the author wasted such an excellent premise on a subpar book. Either way, it should be interesting.

11. Worth of a King by Kendra E. Ardnek (August 27). I alpha-read Worth and ahhhhhhhh!!!!!! I love it almost as much as I love Lady Dragon, Tela Du. It's got pre-scale Amberite (they're adorable) and lots of Laura (one of my favorite of Kendra's characters) and Deladia (which joins Amberite and Reutra as one of my top three favorite ships in Kendra's books) and dragons and secret plots and counterplots and assassins and just a lot of awesome. Y'all should go preorder it, if you like ebooks, or else keep an eye on the Amazon page if you're more of a paper-and-ink person.

What books are you excited for this summer? Please tell me in the comments!
Thanks for reading!
-Sarah (Leilani Sunblade)