February Doings: Surprisingly Not-Blah!

So remember how I said last month that February is the most boring month of the year? Well, that may still be true . . . but this last month has actually been pretty interesting, at least for me! It's also been an odd mix of busy and really chill, so that helps. Anyway, let's get on with what made it so interesting.

Writing!

• So whatever made February interesting, it definitely wasn't writing, because I only wrote 554 words this month, and all of them were for one of the GTW writing prompts. It was still fun, and I really didn't expect to get any actual writing done this month anyway, but yeah. Also, while I'm actually rather pleased with what I came up with for the prompt (which was to have one of your characters meet his or her future self), I'm probably not posting it here. 
• I did a bit better on editing, getting in about 1,661 words. Admittedly, most of that was re-editing new scenes that I wrote last month, but oh well. Better than nothing. Also, the number is lovely and symmetrical, which makes me happy.
• I did figure out the problem I mentioned last month, I think, thanks to a lecture on the music of the Romantic period. (Fun fact: Franz Liszt was a total drama king who associated himself with the Faust legend- as in, he played up the idea that he sold his soul to the devil in exchange for insane musical skill- and on top of that, he was an egotistic playboy to rival Tony Stark. I will leave you to wonder how, if at all, this possibly relates to a medieval-esque fantasy story.) The solution to the problem will involve a fairly extensive rewrite of that subplot . . . but it should make for more conflict in that subplot, while taking out the character altogether would mean less, aside from random encounters, and would require just as much work, if not more.
• Also, editing on Fight Song is currently not in progress, but I hope to make it in progress soon, and I'll start posting the story as soon as I have a few chapters done- that way I have a bit of a buffer, but not so much that I can't adapt to any feedback I get.

Reading!

• So I totally thought that I read a lot this past month . . . but actually I read next to nothing and just took a long time to do it. 
• I finally satisfied my Discworld kick, but not before I'd finished The Truth (a good story, but one that put me very much in the mood for Moist von Lipwig), a reread of Making Money (to satisfy the desire for Moist von Lipwig), and Hogfather (which I'd intended to read around Christmas, but which I couldn't get from Overdrive until this month). By that time, much as I love Discworld, I was ready for something new.
• "Something new," as it turned out, was The Fires of Heaven, the fifth Wheel of Time novel. Yes, this is the same series as that one book that took me a month to finish. I don't think The Fires of Heaven will take quite that long . . . but it's hard to say, because I've currently paused reading it. Why? Well . . .
• I got a blind date! With a book. Not a person. A love life is a thing that happens to other people right now, thank you, unless you count getting crushes on fictional characters. And in any case, I'm generally opposed to blind dates with people on principle, but with books? Sounds like fun! So, after perusing the tables full of "masked" books, I picked up one that advertised itself as "fantasy" and "Greek mythology" and found myself reading . . . Daughter of Smoke and Bone. Which is not something I ever planned on reading, but that's rather the point of a blind date with a book. Overall, it wasn't bad, but it's not one I would recommend either. 
• That said, I got to pick up another blind date book (at this point I'm probably either addicted or just aggressively procrastinating on The Fires of Heaven), and this one is more promising: East by Edith Pattou, a retelling of "East of the Sun, West of the Moon." At the time of writing this post, I'm not quite done with it, but I'm really enjoying it. (By the time you read this, however, I'll probably be done with it, so feel free to ask what I thought.) Unfortunately, it's making me want to work on editing Monster in the Castle, but other things are higher priority and I don't even have the notebooks . . . ugh. Writer problems.
• Oh, and towards the beginning of the month, I read Blood Ties, which was pretty fun. It wasn't quite what I'd expected (for one thing, I thought it would be funnier), but I enjoyed it on the whole. It's urban fantasy, which I'm always hungry for more of- and it includes a berserker who happens to knit as a hobby, so that's awesome.

  Watching!

• Same old same old: still watching Merlin. Still on Season Two. Still facepalming over certain characters' bad life choices.
• Seriously, though, I really want to write an AU fanfic in which Merlin tells Morgana that he has magic too and then she doesn't end up turning villain and they team up to take on the actual villains who inevitably threaten Camelot every other week (or so it seems, which would be great except for the fact that neither of them is much good at telling each other anything about what they're going to be doing- but somehow, they don't kill each other and the villain gets found, so it works. And everyone things that Merlin is developing a thing for Morgana and vice-versa, even though he's really not (well, maybe before a certain point, but not after), but they let people think that because it's a good cover for what's actually going on. And yeah. Everything would be awesome. Except Uther would still exist, but oh well.
• Back to the actual show, not my fantasy of the fantasy- I would be almost done with the season by now, actually, but my roommate went home for one weekend, and we were both pretty busy the weekend before. So that made two weekends where we didn't watch anything, which is sad. We are hoping to get one more episode in before spring break, though, particularly since the next episode introduces one of my roommate's favorite characters.

Life!

 

• This month, for me, basically centered around three big events: The Music Man, my speech, and the Ark Encounter. I already posted about The Music Man, so I won't go into that more- but it was pretty great.
• My speech also went well, thankfully. As I think I mentioned last month, it was on character archetypes, specifically character archetypes in popular media, which meant I got to talk about LOTR and Marvel and Star Wars and a few animated films in the process of explaining the different archetypes. And I didn't freak out or forget what I was supposed to say, so that was good.
• Oh, and after I did my speech, I ended up going to the Career Fair, which was . . . overwhelming. I'm glad I wasn't actually looking for a job, because I think I would've died. I did manage to talk to a whole two companies, though, so that's something. And then I went back to my room and called my mom and ate a sea-salt caramel truffle. And had a brownie sundae for dessert after dinner. (Chocolate: the ultimate reward/nerve-calmer!)
• Anyway. Third major event: the Ark Encounter! I've wanted to visit both the Ark Encounter and the Creation Museum basically since I found out they existed. I still haven't managed the museum, but one of the orgs I'm in put together a trip to the Ark . . . which only three people total ended up wanting to go on, because they scheduled it right after the planning session for our major essay of the semester. But I put off schoolwork for the day to go, and I really enjoyed it! They did a great job showing what life on the ark might've been like, what animals were on the ark (differentiating between species and kinds), evidence for creation and the flood and such . . . Basically, the whole thing was awesome. Expensive, yes, but awesome. If you're in the area, I highly recommend stopping by.
• Other events: I got to see my aunt and her family the weekend before the Ark Encounter, which was a lot of fun. She also took me out to lunch, which made it better- don't get me wrong; my college has pretty good food for a cafeteria, but Sunday lunch, they don't even try. It's terrible. But that Sunday I got to eat good food (specifically, a falafel pita) with family (rather than eating alone), so yeah. That was great.
• Also, one of the guys from the other section of the honors class put together a trivia bowl thing that meets every Friday. Essentially, people show up, they somehow split into teams, and they answer trivia questions. It's super fun; I've been three times so far, and . . . well, I don't do super great, but I have answered some questions. Fewer than I've gotten credit for, since bonus questions don't count towards your personal score. But I've really enjoyed it and I'm going to keep doing it the rest of the semester.

March Plans!

• Spring break! Spring break! Spring break! I get to see my family again! And be at home! And not go to class! And hopefully work on editing a bunch of stuff! And it's going to be awesome! And it's almost here!
• If you can't tell, I might be a tiny bit excited about break. You probably couldn't tell. 
• Other than that . . .  business as usual, pretty much. Classes, papers, speeches, tests . . .  I think I have to do an advocacy presentation sometime in March for speech, but that might be happening early April. And I have a big paper for Cultural Anthropology that I need to start research for. I'm probably going to do that over break(!!!), if all goes well.  
• And my roommate and I need to pick up the pace on Merlin . . . I want to be done with season two and a good bit into season three by the end of the month so that we'll have half a shot of finishing it before the end of the school year.
• As I said earlier, I'm going to work on editing stuff, hopefully. I want to get another several chapters of Destinies and Decisions done, plus I want to start on Fight Song and get through a few chapters of that. We'll see which one takes priority over break(!!!).
• And I'm probably going to have to figure out next fall's classes . . . I already have a pretty good idea of what I'm doing, so it's just a matter of figuring out how to make everything line up. Shouldn't be too hard.
• Oh, and Gillian Bronte Adams is running a birthday blog tour for Songkeeper, which'll last all this month and into April and it's going to be pretty cool and I'll definitely be following that. (There's a giveaway involved. And a mug. And I'm hoping for sneak peeks of the last book. We'll see what happens.) 

 How's your February been? Boring? Or surprisingly exciting like mine? Please tell me in the comments!

Thanks for reading!

-Sarah (Leilani Sunblade) 

February Doings

First off, happy Leap Day! I don't know if anyone actually does anything for Leap Day . . . but if you do, tell me in the comments. (I, personally, will be enjoying an extra day of reading. Hopefully.) Anyway, onto the doings of this month!

Writing!

• The entirety of the month was spent in a long-term word war with some friends at Whitehall, which helped a lot with motivation. I didn't win- the person who did win left me behind midway through the month and I never caught up- but I'm still happy with how I did. Why? Well . . .
• I finished Monster in the Castle! Two years and just-under-ten-months of (on-and-off) work and it's finally done! Or . . . drafting it is, for clarification. It still needs a lot of editing, but that'll wait. I ended up writing the climax and denouement in about grand and glorious days heavy with inspiration. Overall, I'm actually really happy with how it turned out.
• Non-spoilery snippet from the climax (well, non-spoilery considering what the story is based on):

"Queen du Karel's expression tightened. 'Servant's work? Do you intend to make a mockery of your betrothed, Lord Aethan?'
'No more than you plan to make a mockery of my country, your majesty,' Aethan replied, with a diplomat's smile. 'In any case, any lady of Aldurna, even the queen herself, could perform this task. Surely the princess is capable as well.'"

• I really thought I'd be burned out on this world and characters by now- that after I finished Monster, I'd want to give up on these fairy tale retellings for a year or two. But, amazingly, I'm not. I have ideas for two or three more novels in my head, and while I'm not sure when I'll write them, I do want it to be (relatively) soon. 
• However, at the moment I have no WIP (which is a really weird feeling . . .) and instead I'm hoping to focus on editing and short stories. Oh, and worldbuilding. Storyworld First awaits!
• Amazingly, I did get a respectable amount of editing done this month, despite all the writing. I'm up to chapter eight of Destinies and Decisions, so huzzah! I also figured out how to use yWriter . . . ish. It works much better once you have the tedium of making characters and all that set-up stuff. And it works quite well for when you want to work ahead (as long as you know roughly how many chapters are going to be in between what you're working on and what you've already done) or if you need to switch around the order of chapters . . . which is something I've had to do a bit.   

Reading!

• You know how I said I only read 12 books last month? I read even fewer this month: 10 total, and one of them was more of a short story. However, considering how much writing I did, I'm not really surprised.
• The reading highlights of the month, at least at the time I'm writing this, were Stars Above (the Lunar Chronicles anthology, which was wonderful and provided a very nice closure to the series . . . even if all my predictions about the wedding of the century were wrong!) and The Eye of the World (which was probably as long as any of the Stormlight Archive and rather slower . . . but still very good).
• I mentioned last month that I was hoping to reread the Girl of Fire and Thorns trilogy- which I succeeded in doing! I liked some bits more than the first time and some bits less . . . but I'd forgotten a lot of what happened, so it was almost like reading them for the first time, except I had a bit of warning of certain especially-memorable bits.
• I also enjoyed The Screaming Staircase and The Dagger in the Desk, both of which were deliciously creepy and a bit Jackaby-esque, though not quite as much as I'd been hoping. I have the next two books in the series waiting in my room, but I haven't read them yet, because . . .
• I finally have Bands of Mourning! At the time I write this, I haven't actually read it yet, because shortly before the previously-mentioned three grand and glorious days of writing, I put a personal ban on reading any and all Sanderson until I finished my novel. However, since I didn't actually pick up BoM until Friday, I first reread Warbreaker and Elantris, both of which I already had out. There are, by the way, some rather striking similarities between the two novels. I'm not sure which of the two is better, though. And, since I finished Elantris yesterday, I'll hopefully be reading Bands of Mourning by the time you see this post! At last!

 Life!

• My family celebrated Valentine's Day with peppermint patty brownies and our usual half-dipped heart cookies. Well, the brownies might not have been for Valentine's Day, per se, but they were close to it. The point is, both brownies and cookies were delicious, and they would've been the outside-of-reading-and-writing highlight of the month, if not for . . .
• Sunshine! Glorious, beautiful sunshine! I mean, we had snow (not a ton, but enough), and we had miserably cold temperatures, and we had weeks of clouds. But the better part of the last week has been sunshine and fairly warm temperatures- all but one of the bad days wouldn't have been unreasonable for a Virginia February; the better days felt more like spring- so thank God! I even went for a walk yesterday, that's how nice it was. Of course, it's supposed to snow tomorrow . . . but that's tomorrow.
• I promise that I won't talk about the weather in every Doings post. Only when there's something exceptional that happened. 
• I am, by the way, getting really tired of hearing and seeing the Allegiant trailer on YouTube. I know it hasn't been out for terribly long (or I don't think it has?) . . . but I feel like I've heard it way too often.
• Last week was just a really good week in general, ok? There was lots of writing, there was rereading-of-Sanderson, there was lovely weather, and calculus didn't kill me. 

March Plans!

• I'm going to do a lot of editing, much of it on Destinies and Decisions, but I'm hoping to get back to Between Two Worlds some as well. I'm still not quite sure how I'm going to balance them . . . depending how Destinies and Decisions goes, I may try to switch back and forth between them, or I might just work on Destinies until I get stuck and then go back to BTW for a while.
• As mentioned previously, I'm also going to be trying to do some short story writing (mostly one-shots) and worldbuilding. I may or may not end up requesting prompts on here for one-shots . . . my plot bunnies have an annoying habit of hiding whenever I'm actually looking for them. And, of course, I do need to be thinking about Camp NaNoWriMo in April . . .
• Tomorrow is the announcement of the winners of teh Five Magic Spindles contest hosted by Rooglewood Press! I'm a bit nervous (to put it lightly) since this is my first year entering and I have no idea how much chance I have . . . And if you happen to notice me squealing, yelling, dying, or otherwise being somewhat-incoherently excited on forums or Goodreads tomorrow, it's either the contest or Bands of Mourning. Or both. I'm really hoping for both.

How was your February? What plans do you have for March? Are you celebrating Leap Day? Please tell me in the comments!
Thanks for reading!

-Sarah (Leilani Sunblade)  

Story Snippets 2/25/15

Hello, everyone! In the last month, I've been working on editing my two most recent WIPs. Neither is ready to show to people, but I still want to share what I've been doing. So I thought I'd post some snippets! I was originally just going to post bits of Between Two Worlds, which I've done the most on- I have almost-seven chapters edited, as opposed to only one in Destinies and Decisions. (I'd have more done on D&D, but I had to entirely rewrite the first chapter. Augh, beginnings, why must you torment me so?) But then I decided that I'd go ahead and just post snippets from both, just not as many from Destinies and Decisions as from Between Worlds. Also, some of my D&D snippets may be from my rough draft rather than from what I've edited. Anyway, on with the snippets!

Between Two Worlds

For the past two years, I’ve dreamed of this day. I’ve imagined in detail what will happen: how my neighborhood will look as I walk up the street once more, my joyful recognition as I pick out memories from my surroundings, my excitement as I near my house. I’ve pictured how my parents will greet me, their surprise and relief to see me back, how I’ll tell them everything I’ve done since I last walked out my door. I’ve laughed as I thought of my sister’s reaction, no less joyful than my parents’ but twice as surprised and outraged that I’d gone and had an adventure without her. I’ve thought many times of what it’ll be like to live again in my own home, sleep in my own bed, and return to my favorite activities and haunts.

Yet, despite all that, my dreams are wrong. The street I now walk up is not quite familiar; everything seems to have shrunk and shifted ever so slightly. My joy is cooled and tempered with sorrow, my excitement dulled with longing for something else I cannot have. And my home itself . . . I pause at the end of the driveway and look up at the house. Has it always been so small? So like the other houses around it?

~~~

Aedon waits for me around the other side of the church, where we can’t be seen from the door or the parking lot. As I approach, he gives me that easy grin I know so well. “Hello, Lady Kate. Funny that someone I’ve never met would tell me to meet her outside, isn’t it? Maybe she does know me after all.”

“And maybe she doesn’t like answering more of her sister’s awkward questions than is absolutely necessary.” I cross my arms. “What are you doing here?”

~~~

A familiar figure stands before me, tall and lithe, a second dagger ready in his left hand. I let out a moan of mixed relief and pain and manage a slight smile. “Botheration, Jarek,” I mutter, “how many times do I owe you my life now?”

“Seven and counting, shadow.” Jarek steps over the soldier’s body and kneels beside me. “You should be more careful.”

~~~

Aedon continues to hover over me once I’m settled in the chair. “What happened, Kate?”

“I was attacked.” I struggle to keep my eyes open, suddenly feeling very tired even though it’s not even nine in the morning. “What’s it look like?”

“You sound like me.” Jarek claims the other chair and raises an eyebrow at me. “Maybe that bump on the head did more damage than I thought.”

~~~

When we reach the path, we find that the soldiers’ bodies have been cleared away. A faint smell of burned flesh still hangs in the air, sending a stab of guilt into my soul. Two more people, dead because of me.

I know I’ll see them again in my dreams, watch once more as they die- one to my fire, one to Jarek’s knife. I’ll watch and I’ll see all the details I missed in the moment, and I’ll remember all too clearly that they likely bore me no ill will; they were simply doing following orders.

As if reading my thoughts, Aedon whispers soft words, “Don’t go down that path, Lady Kate. Don’t let the guilt eat you. What’s done is done; there’s nothing you can do to change that.”

Tears bead my eyes as we continue down the black asphalt trail. “They’re dead, Aedon. And it’s my fault.”

“I know.” He rubs my shoulder gently. “I know, but remember what Sir Camrick taught us. If you allow guilt to consume you, you’ll have nothing left.”

~~~

Destinies and Decisions

Gwen walked over to Rachelle, Skyla, and Ariana and fixed Rachelle with a firm stare. "Stay out of trouble, understand? I want you to still be in one piece when I see you again."

Rachelle made a face. "I already promised Hunter I'd be careful. Besides, I don't get into trouble; it pounces on me."

"Then stay out of trouble's way." For emphasis, Gwen let her stare linger a moment longer.

~~~

Bianca slid her rook two squares to the right. "Check."

Jared took the only option he had: moving his king a space forward and to the left. "You know, I'm starting to hate that word."

Bianca moved her queen three spaces to the left. "Then I apologize that I must say it again: check."

Sliding his king back a square, Jared scowled. "If you were really sorry, you wouldn't find so much reason to say it."

"But then I would eventually force you to say it instead, and I'm sure that would be worse." Bianca smiled sweetly as she moved her knight a space to the right and two spaces down. "Also, checkmate."

~~~

A few minutes passed before Gwen replied. Did you know you're the only person I've ever heard stammer while mindspeaking?

~~~

And just for fun, a little bit of what I've written this month in Monster in the Castle:

Hayden sighed. "Master Silver, we are not going to fake a crisis simply to convince Miss Pansy to ask for a reprieve from her promise. Nor," he added, anticipating Jason's next suggestion, "are we going to cause one."

Jason's expression could've passed for innocence had it not become an amused smirk partway through. "Cause a crisis? Now I know I'm rubbing off on you, highness. That's not a bad idea."

~~~

"And not much else besides more questions." Jason made for the door. "Why am I not surprised?"

"I expect it is because we are Leaguesmen, Master Silver." Hayden reached the door first and pulled it open. "Questions are the purpose for our existence; to find their answers, our calling."

Jason snorted. "Leave it to you, highness, to make a rhetorical question into a philosophical statement."

~~~

And that's it for the snippets. I hope you enjoyed! How's your writing going? Feel free to leave some of your favorite lines you've recently written in the comments; I'd love to read them!
Thanks for reading!

-Sarah (Leilani Sunblade)