I was going to start this post by saying that I feel like I've been rereading a lot lately, but then I realized . . . there has never been a time when I didn't reread quite a bit. Because here's the deal: my to-be-read list may be tall enough to reach the International Space Station and weighty enough to bring said space station crashing down to earth, but that will not stop me when I feel like rereading an old favorite. Or, in some cases, an old semi-favorite. Or just a book that's been on my mind lately. But, you know, the mark of a great book is that you can read it over and over again and never love it less, so . . . maybe it just speaks to the quality of the books I've read? There definitely are certain books I tend to come back to more than others or that are just a special treat to reread, and today, I'm spotlighting a few of those.

Books I Love to Reread

1. The Queen's Thief series by Megan Whalen Turner. This has got to be one of the most rereadable series I know of. If you've read the Queen's Thief book, you know that these are subtle, marvelously plotted stories and that Turner is a master of foreshadowing and perfectly prepared twists. This becomes even more clear on the reread, when you can pick up all kinds of clues you missed the first time around. In fact, I'd argue that you have to reread them at least once for the full experience. This is balanced by the fact that they're just the right length to be easy to pick up and reread — you can get through them fairly quickly without feeling guilty about taking a full month away from your library books and to-be-read list. (Plus, it's physically impossible to not love the characters more every time you read their stories.)
2. Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones. Speaking of falling in love with characters all over again . . . every time I reread Howl's Moving Castle, I find new reasons to love this story and these characters. That said, the bigger reason why it's on this list is that it's very much a comfort read for me, and it has been from the first. If I'm stressed or upset and need to be very quickly cheered up and pulled out of my troubles, and if whatever I'm currently reading doesn't seem like it'll do the trick for whatever reason (or if I'm not currently reading anything), this is my first choice of what to pick up. Even a few chapters are often enough to get me perked back up, thinking reasonably, and able to deal with whatever has me in a tizzy.
3. The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien. Of course, LOTR has to make the list! For several years, I did a yearly or bi-yearly reread of this series, usually scheduled around either my birthday or half-birthday (since I read the trilogy for the first time within days of when I turned either twelve or thirteen, if I recall correctly). That dropped off, but I did recently reread these books, and they were just so lovely to come back to — even better than I remembered, since you really do notice new facets of the story each time. The only reason it's not at the top of the list is that the length does make this a bit more of a time commitment than some other books. (Technically, the Queen's Thief series may be longer in total, but each book is a quicker read.)
4. The All Creatures Great and Small series by James Herriot (especially the first book). Like Howl, this is very much a comfort read, but of a somewhat different kind. It's a wonderfully steadying, heartwarming in the realest possible sense. I reach for Howl when stress and frustration reach a boiling point, and it makes me laugh and forget my problems for an hour or two. I reach for All Creatures when my world feels uncertain, and it helps me remember that everything will be ok in the end (because, even if Herriot never alludes to God or anything particularly spiritual, many of these stories come out to the lesson of the sparrows). Of course, I don't only pick it up in times of emotional turmoil; it's a lovely read any time I need something comparatively low-stakes and optimistic and sincere and funny.
5. Entwined by Heather Dixon Wallwork. This is both one of my favorite fairy tale retellings and a Christmas read, thereby giving me two excuses to pick it up over and over again. While I don't tend to notice new things about this story as much as I do other stories on this list, it's always a pleasure to rediscover moments I'd forgotten or reexperience the best bits and to come out of the story feeling immensely cheered and pleased.

Do you like rereading books? What are your favorite books to reread? Please tell me in the comments!
Thanks for reading!
-Sarah

No, I'm Not Going to Watch The Rings of Power

 So, here's the thing. Y'all know I love The Lord of the Rings. Y'all also know that I'm not crazy about movies, but that I try to be generous when it comes to book-to-screen adaptations, even when they're not perfectly faithful to the book. I love the Peter Jackson Lord of the Rings films, even if they didn't do Faramir anything like justice. I watched the Hobbit movies in theaters and argued in their favor even when some of their decisions made me more than a little upset. And when I learned that there was going to be a new TV show based on The Silmarillion and other pre-LOTR Middle Earth writings coming in September, I was pretty optimistic. But the more I've heard, the more certain I am, even as early as it is: I am not watching The Rings of Power — and here's the reasons why.

No, I'm Not Going to Watch The Rings of Power (And Here's Why)

1. They literally cannot be really faithful to the source material. Does that sound overly harsh? Yes. But the showrunners have admitted as much — they don't have the rights to The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, or anything outside The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, and the Appendices. That means they're filling in a lot with their own inventions. I will give them credit for stating outright that this is basically a high-budget cinematic AU fanfic (though they said it in a fancier way); it's kind of refreshing to have that established at the outset. But that's not the show I'm looking for
2. They did this to Elrond:Look, out of all the characters in the show, Elrond is the one I have the most investment in. And this . . . this is not Elrond. He's described in the First Look article as a "politically ambitious young leader," and . . . no. No. No. I live with the character assassination of Faramir in the LOTR movie because the movies are, in most other respects, true to the books. I will not accept them doing the same to Elrond in a show that's not going to make up for it in almost all other respects.
3. I don't trust Amazon. Look, I'm not here to critique Amazon in general. I'm not even here to comment on how they've done with some of their other recent fantasy-book-or-story-to-movie adaptations. I'm here to say that I don't trust Amazon to get what The Lord of the Rings and the Middle Earth books in general are really about, as evidenced by the fact that they compared it to Game of Thrones, of all things. Honestly? In the hands of someone who understands the themes and the stories and the concepts Tolkien was trying to convey, this show could be good — even with the very drastic changes they're making, even with the amount of original content they're adding, even with how they're treating Elrond. But I don't trust Amazon to get that, and I don't trust Amazon to pick showrunners who'll get it either. (Again, they called Game of Thrones the "spiritual successor" to The Lord of the Rings. Spiritual disowned-wastrel-nephew, maybe. Hardly a successor.)
4. I don't want The Lord of the Rings to become Amazon's MCU or Star Wars. Maybe this sounds weird to people. I don't know. But while I liked the MCU movies (up until I stopped being able to keep track of them) and I enjoy most of the interactions I have with Star Wars and Star Wars-adjacent stories, they're . . . kind of a lot. It's one thing after another, produced so fast that you barely have time to realize a series is running or a movie is releasing before it's over, and from what I've heard, that speed is reflected in the quality of some of the shows. And, look. All three storyworlds — The Lord of the Rings, the MCU, and Star Wars — have the potential to support this volume of story. But I think that the people behind the new MCU and Star Wars stuff aren't consistently respecting the story or the fans — they're doing this because this is what sells, and they'll keep stretching the material further and further as long as it keeps selling. I don't want that for any of these three storyworlds, but I want it least of all for The Lord of the Rings.
5. There are other shows I'd rather watch and stories I'd rather enjoy. You know how long my backlist is? It's so long. Even if you leave off shows I'm currently watching, even if you restrict the list to only shows and no movies, no YouTube series, no other forms of media, there's a lot I want to see. There's a lot I know will be good because it's been recommended to me by friends I trust. So, I'm not going to put time and effort into a show I wouldn't look twice to it if it didn't have The Lord of the Rings pinned on to the title when there are so many other stories I could enjoy instead.

So, that's my take. Is there a possibility I will change my mind in November, once there's several episodes actually out and I know if my worst fears have come to pass? Maybe, if literally everyone says it's great. And I am still holding out hope that the animated War of the Rohirrim movie will make up for the failings of The Rings of Power, since it at least has some of the Lord of the Rings leadership on board. But for now? I'm pulling out before I can be disappointed.

Are you planning to watch The Rings of Power? How are you feeling about what we know about the show so far? Please tell me in the comments!
Thanks for reading!

July 2021 Doings!

 

Hey'a, friends! It's the end of the month, which means it's time for another Doings! post! On a side note, I'm going to officially make a slight adjustment to the Doings! schedule: going forward, Doings! will be posted on the Friday closest to the last day of the month. I've been using this schedule for a fair bit already, but I wanted to make it official because I had gotten a few questions about why I was posting a week early.

Now, with that out of the way, let's get on with the post!

Writing!

• The official cover reveal for Gilded in Ice occurred earlier this month, along with the announcement of its upcoming release on September 24 as part of the Frosted Roses Arista Challenge Group, and the preorder launch. If you want to preorder the ebook, it's available via Amazon; for a paperback copy, you'll have to wait until the release proper.
• Speaking of the release, you can now both sign up for the blog tour and request ARCs. If you want to help support the release of Gilded in Ice or any of the Frosted Roses books, this is a great way to do that! You can find all the book and tour details on this post.
• Aside from the Gilded in Ice cover reveal, this month has been very quiet on the writing front. I've laid my plans for the next few adventures in my D&D campaign, though I've made less progress writing them than intended. And I did most of the work on the paperback cover for Gilded in Ice, which isn't writing, but is writing-adjacent. Otherwise, though, I've been taking it easy and spending time catching up on reading, gaming, and spending time with family and friends.

Reading!

• Despite the fact that I said I was taking this month off to catch up on reading, I didn't actually read that many books in July — only six. Of course, of those six, one was fairly long . . .
• Most of this month's reading was dedicated to finishing the Green Ember series and its two spinoff short-story series, which I really enjoyed. There's such a beautiful message and promise of hope that runs through the narrative to the very end. Pair that with a lot of emphasis on friendships and family relationships and you've got a story I'm very likely to love. I'll probably post more thoughts later this month, so keep your eye out for that!
• I also finished rereading the Lord of the Rings trilogy this month with Return of the King! So that was fun. I have concluded in the process of rereading it that, of all the minor characters in LOTR (not counting The Silimarillion), Beregond and Bergil are the most underrated. (For those who forgot or don't know: Beregond is a guard of Minas Tirith who befriends Pippin; Bergil is Beregond's son.)
• Theoretically, this should be the bit where I reread The Silimarillion . . . but I'm still kinda intimidated by that. We'll see.
• And, yeah. Five Green Ember books, the Return of the King, and I'm done. (Well, I did reread some Fellowship of Fantasy short stories throughout the month when I wanted something short and contained before bed. But I don't count that.)

Watching!

• We did not watch any LOTR this month, but we were kind of too busy. I did watch quite a few other movies, though!
• We started out the month with An American Tail for Independence Day, which was . . . darker than I remembered. In all fairness, I hadn't watched it since I was . . . eight or nine, at the oldest. It sparked a lengthy conversation about movies that are theoretically made for kids but which would probably traumatize small children and what movies some of my friends were and weren't allowed to watch and why they weren't allowed to watch them and so on. It was a good movie, though!
• The next weekend, we re-watched The Music Man, which is always a favorite. I've said this before, but Harold Hill's character and arc is basically one of my favorite archetypes/tropes, and I will never get tired of it in any form.
• I did manage to mark another movie off my to-watch list, though, by finally watching The Emperor's New Groove (which I voted for when we were picking a Disney movie because it gets referenced SO MUCH and I wanted to understand the references). I actually enjoyed it a lot more than you woud expect, given that it's a movie very reliant on the humiliation of a central character and I suffer from intense secondhand embarassment. I think the fact that you aren't supposed to like Kuzco until a fair way through the movie helped. The story overall was rather different from what I expected, but it was fun.
• And, as per the usual, I'm still watching Critical Role. Slowly. I'm only partway through Episode 72, but, again, I've been busy. The Clay backstory was cool, though. Also, I think this is the episode where Stuff Happens With Fjord, but as of the writing of this post, I haven't quite gotten there yet. (By the time you read this, I probably will have watched it, and if I've watched it, I suspect I'll have Opinions.)

Life!

Almost everyone died in this game of Sentinels . . . but we still won!

• Storms and stars and satellites, was this a busy month or what? (Spoiler alert: it was a busy month.)
• 4th of July weekend was probably one of the two quietest weekends of the month. We didn't go see fireworks, but we got together with some Bible study friends for s'mores and mountain pies, which was fun, and my dad, sister, and I went to the shooting range.
• The following weekend, my grandpa came down to visit. He hasn't been down in . . . probably two years, honestly, though we've gone up to visit him at his house, so that was nice. That weekend also featured a chocolate raspberry mousse cake, which was so good. Utterly delicious.
• (I also ended up working Saturday morning that weekend, filling in for the usual slides-and-sound person at a funeral at the church where I work. It was a very nice funeral, and it was clear that the deceased was well-loved by many, many people. It did go kind of long, though, which was, y'know, fine other than the fact that I needed to get home and make rolls to go with dinner.)
• We had about a week of quiet after my grandpa left, and then our next visitor arrived: my college roommate! So that was SUPER fun. She stayed for just under a week, and we spent most of that time playing board games, and by "board games" I mostly mean Sentinels of the Multiverse. Her visit was also when I watched The Emperor's New Groove for the first time.
• Probably the highlight of her visit was Friday, when we got together with my sister's roommate (who lives in the area) for a full day of fun. We visited an escape room, which we solved with just ten minutes to spare. Then, after stops at the board game store and an ice cream parlor, we returned to my house . . . for more board games, obviously. My sister's roommate had brought some of her game collection to complement what we had, and she introduced us to a new game, The Crew, as well as some new heroes and hero alternates for Sentinels. Then we finished out the night with pizza, a cheese night (which, for the uninitiated, basically means everyone brought fancy-ish cheeses and we ate them with crackers and sparkling juice), and Mysterium (like Clue, but 500x better).
• In addition to all that, I've been going through my church's membership class so I'll be qualified to volunteer, lead a small group, and otherwise get connected as I choose. That's been interesting.
• My sister and I have also been continuing through Portal 2, and she was appropriately surprised by the twists in the storyline. I also gave Journey another try, restarting the game completely so I can try to figure out what I missed that got me stuck on the third stage. I've only replayed the first two stages, but now that I have a better idea what I'm looking for, I think I'm enjoying it more.
• And, of course, work continues. Not much to say about work other than it's been quiet and I continue to enjoy it.

August Plans

• My big projects for August are edits, formatting, and blog tour prep for Gilded in Ice. I'm starting to get back feedback from my beta readers, and I'm looking forward to polishing up the story and getting it ready to share with the rest of y'all. (I'm also a little nervous . . . but nerves always kick in around the editing stage.)
• My sister returns to college partway through the month, which means we need to make sure we finish up everything we wanted to do with her during the summer, including games and watching The Return of the King. That also means I'll have to get used to not having someone to chat with over dishes again.
• My D&D group should finish up this season/arc this month — I think we only have two, maybe three sessions left. We're halfway through the climax now, and . . . let's just say that the most intense part of that battle is still to come.
• On the reading front, I'm torn between the fact that I intended to read more classics and epic fantasy this year and the fact that I got four months of Kindle Unlimited for free and I want to make the most of them . . . which mostly means reading all the City Between books and miscellaneous other indie books that I haven't convinced myself to spend money on yet. We'll see which urge wins out.
• Yeah. I'm hoping August will be a quieter month than the last two. We'll see if that works out or not . . .

How was your July? Any exciting plans for August? Have you played any board games (or even video games) lately that you really enjoyed? Please tell me in the comments!
Thanks for reading!

June 2021 Doings!

 Hey'a, friends! June and my blogging hiatus are both at an end, so here I am with the month's Doings! I'll have some other update-y posts for you later in the month (specifically, my mid-year reading roundups next week and a general writing update towards the end of July), but those are later. Let's get on with the Doings!

Writing!

• The second draft of Gilded in Ice, the sequel to The Midnight Show, is finished! Huzzah! This took much longer than anticipated, but that's probably more due to poor estimating on my part than it is due to the book itself. I mean, it's kind of due to the book. But it's mostly on me.
• Almost as exciting: Gilded in Ice also has a blurb, tagline, and cover! The cover will be revealed at a later date (though you get a sneak peak above), but the blurb and tagline are out there on the interwebs in their finished form, if you care to seek for them.
• I didn't do very much D&D writing this month, but my group did get to play IN PERSON for the first time in almost a year and a half! It was so nice to actually play without screens to separate us. Everyone was much more engaged, even though the session was mostly combat (which usually is when people are most likely to get distracted). I mean, the fact that we got to have a physical map (which is a lot easier to see and interact with) and candies for the baddies probably helps a lot with that. But it's also just a lot easier and more fun to talk and interact when you're face-to-face.

Reading!

• Apparently this has been a really long month, because I genuinely thought some of my June reads were from back in May.
• Anyway. This was another month in which my reading was kind of all over the place. The best book of the month was probably The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep, which was recommended to me by a friend with excellent taste in books. It's urban fantasy about a man who can bring characters and things and places out of books, and there's a lot of celebration of both brotherhood and classic literature, and it's just a very good story. A bit slow in the middle, but still very good.
• I continued reading the Green Ember books; I got through book 2, two of the novellas, and most of book 3 in June, and at the moment I'm either finishing or just finished with book 3 (not pictured). I'm very much enjoying the series, and I think it's especially good for this present moment. One of the themes of the story seems to be hope in the midst of heartache, and it's just a good reminder that nothing evil endures.
• (On a related note, I kind of want to make art of a particular refrain from this series — "It will not be so in the Mended Wood" — and of the "it will shine out the brighter" LOTR quote and of a few other similar quotes. I am bad at text-based art, so we'll see if it happens.)
• On the other side of the spectrum, Rule of Wolves and Dirk Gently were both better than I expected. I read Rule of Wolves because I heard Kaz and the Crows were in it, and . . . they were, but honestly, their part wasn't even in my top five for favorite parts of the book. The story as a whole has moved away from angst and back towards clever people being clever and amazing, which I appreciate. And then Dirk Gently I picked up on a whim, despite the fact that the only other thing I've read by Douglas Adams, I dislike. But this one was enjoyable! And interesting! And funny without being depressing! So I count that as a win.
• Rounding out the month are the Critical Role Mighty Nein art book — stealth-read in ebook form at work on a slow afternoon — and a reread of The Whispering Skull, the second Lockwood and Co book. Both were quite enjoyable. The art book had an excellent selection of pieces and some nice "background info" on the world and characters featured. And I liked The Whispering Skull better than I remembered.

Watching!

• Ticking another movie off my list of things-I-should've-watched-years-ago-and-didn't, my family watched National Treasure towards the start of the month. Don't judge me, but I think I liked it better than Indiana Jones. I love a good heist or a good treasure hunt much more than a standard action-adventure, and National Treasure has both. So, yeah. Definitely my cup of tea. Plus it was just a generally fun movie.
• My family also continued rewatching the Lord of the Ring Extended Editions with The Two Towers. When I reread the book a month or so ago, I was surprised by how much more I enjoyed it than I remembered . . . so it's kind of sad that the movie had the opposite effect. The changes that I'm most upset about (how Peter Jackson absolutely ruined Faramir's character and the overemphasis and over-angsting of Aragorn and Arwen's romance) are most prominent in this movie, plus . . . look, I know that my favorite quotes in both the book and movie version of The Lord of the Rings come from Frodo and Sam's part of this book, but other than that, I really do not enjoy Frodo and Sam's journey to Mordor, and it's worse on the screen. On the page, I can read a little faster; on the screen, I'm limited by the pace the director set. So, yeah. If I have to pick one LOTR movie to watch, it would be Fellowship every time.
• And, of course, watching Critical Role continues. I tried the first episode of Exandria Unlimited and got through to the break, but to be honest, I was not enough of a fan to keep going, and I'm definitely not into it enough to watch it live. (Or, live-ish.) It's nothing against the DM or the players; I can tell they were having a great time, and the DM seems pretty fun. But the story they were telling didn't grab me, and without any kind of prior attachment to the characters, I wasn't super inclined to keep going. (I also learned that I do not like watching stuff on Twitch because the chat is super distracting. So that's another point not in its favor. I'll deal with it when the real Campaign 3 rolls around, but not for this.) Instead, I'm going to keep going with Campaign 2. I'm currently on Episode 70, and . . . yeah. It's been heavy, and it's a dark part of the story, but I look forward to what's to come.

Life!

 Despite all my adventures this month, I don't have a single representative picture that doesn't include people who might not want their faces on the internet. Enjoy this picture of my latest sourdough loaf instead.

• Well, this was a busy month, let me tell you!
• The first half of the month was dominated by writing like mad, trying to get my book done . . . and also by my mom fracturing her thumb while working outside Memorial Day weekend. Which is, y'know, non-ideal. And painful for her. And stressful for everyone. And which also meant that my sister and I had to take responsibility for more of the cooking and some of the other around-the-house tasks for a while. (My sister ended up with more of that work than I did, by virtue of the fact that she's home most of the day and I'm not. And I very much appreciate her doing it.) And by the time we got past that, we had come to the point of . . .
• The Ohio adventure! One of my hall friends from college was getting married, which basically meant a mini-reunion of most of the friend group . . . and an eight-hour drive each way. (The drive went fine. My sister copiloted/helped drive half of each side of the trip, and aside from a massive rainstorm while we were in the mountains on the last leg of the trip, everything went smoothly.) And then I had a VERY busy weekend in Ohio making sure I got to do all the things with all the people.
• Thursday evening through Friday afternoon were reasonably chill — I hung out with my roommate (whose house I was staying at), we played Sentinels of the Multiverse, and I wrote while she was at work. Then, Friday evening, the day before the wedding, I drove down to visit a couple of friends who wouldn't be at the weekend's main event. It was so nice to get to enjoy a meal with them again (we were lunch buddies in college, among other connections), and then they introduced me to the board game Scythe, which I honestly enjoyed much more than I expected. I'd heard it was long and a bit complex, and long it was (I stayed much later than I intended, though the thunderstorm that rolled in right as we sat down to dinner also contributed), but it wasn't any more complex than Sentinels. But yeah. There was a lot of good conversation and good fun, and I've missed them a lot.
• Then we get to Saturday! Which was . . . a lot. There was the wedding, obviously, which was lovely. One thing that stood out to me was that it was a lot more sociable than many of the weddings I've attended in the last couple years. Specifically, the bride and groom and the wedding party were able to spend much more time with the guests than at many other weddings, and it was nice to get to spend time with the people I came to see and celebrate.
• After the wedding, the hall group returned to my roommate's home with the intention of continuing celebrations (the "afterparty," if you will), but what actually happened was that everyone crashed until someone said they were hungry and we should eat dinner. But it was nice to have the whole group together again. Conversations were had, photos were taken, and many hugs were given. Many, many hugs.
• And after that was the after-after-party, aka D&D. Which was, as already mentioned, magnificently fun even though we were all exhausted. And even though some of the players had really bad luck with saving throws. And the encounter turned out harder than I expected. It's ok.
• That brings us to the back half of the month, which was taken up by trying to recover my energy after the trip (still haven't fully succeeded, to be honest) and by some workplace stress in the form of one of the staff members leaving unexpectedly. I was honestly one of the people least affected by the departure, but it was still a bit stressful for everyone.
• Oh, and in the midst of all this, my sister and I finished Portal and moved on to Portal 2! (Again, she's playing for the first time, while I'm playing for the third time.) It's still fun, though I do get occasionally frustrated by the fact that things I think should be obvious even on your first playthrough aren't obvious to her. In all fairness, I spent much more time than she did playing computer and video games and watching others play those types of games, so I'm more familiar with the conventions than she is. We're both generally enjoying it, though.
• I also gave Journey (that one video game with the sand and the robed people and all that) a try earlier this week. I'm not entirely sold on it, and I think I missed something in the third level, and possibly several of the other levels, because right now I'm stuck. We'll see if I go back to it or if I just move on to other games.

July Plans

• So, I'm just going to say one thing up front: I am not doing Camp NaNoWriMo this month. I tried back in April and kind of flopped, and I just finished a writing project and need to take a break before I pick up something else big. I don't know how long of a break it needs to be either, just that it needs to be.
• What will I be working on? I'll be doing some D&D writing (which is still writing, but is different enough that it should give my brain a break.) I'll be working on formatting for Gilded (as much as I can without the finished manuscript). I'll be giving myself space to play with other stories and ideas and projects as they come to me. And I'll also be blogging, obviously. My June hiatus was nice, but I don't want to go off-schedule too long.
• That said, the other reason I'm taking July off from planned writing is that it's going to be another busy month in terms of events and social stuff. There's Independence Day, obviously (though that'll be small, since the people we normally watch fireworks with are out of town), and we're having guests twice during the month. (My college roommate is coming to visit, and I am VERY excited.) Plus, I'm thinking of starting a board-games-and-Bible-study group through my church, so I'll need some time to figure out what that looks like and how that works.
• And, of course, I plan to spend a lot of time during the month enjoying good stories in many forms: books (I need to finish my LOTR reread and my Green Ember series read, and I'm thinking of rereading the Knight and Rogue books, or maybe the City Watch thread of Discworld books), movies and shows (I still need to introduce my sister to Firefly, and video games (the Portal 2 playthrough will continue, plus I want to hit some of the other games I've bought on Steam and not gotten around to). All in all, I have a lot to look forward to.

How was your June? Any exciting plans for July? [question] Please tell me in the comments!
Thanks for reading!

May 2021 Doings

Hello, y'all! It's the end of May, or just about — technically, we have a few days left in the month, but I'm posting Doings now for reasons that will be clear at the end of this post. I anticipate a quiet Memorial Day weekend, so it should be fine. Let's get going!

Writing!

• Here's the big news: the Midnight Show sequel has a title! After some deliberation (and title testing on IG), I settled on Gilded in Ice. This will be the second time I've written and released a book that has a wintery title despite being set primarily in spring or summer . . . but this one, at least, does involve quite a bit of coldness. (I'll just have to release some wintery books with warm or summery titles to balance it out. Or, you know, I could stop doing this sort of thing altogether, but where's the fun in that?)
• The actual writing of the book is coming along slowly but steadily. I'm on Chapter 30 or 31 at this point (depending on when you read this post — if I'm lucky or if you're reading this really late, I might be on 32), and I sorted out the rest of the timeline this past week.
• ("Wait, Sarah," you say, "you're editing this, aren't you? Shouldn't the timeline have been figured out months ago?" I've rearranged and cut so many scenes in this book, the original timeline ran for the hills long ago. And I've been working the rewritten timeline out in chunks of five to ten chapters at a time.)
• Anyway. As I was saying, I'm on chapter 30 or 31, and I plan for about 40 chapters total. So it would be feasible for me to finish the rewrite this coming month, provided I'm able to focus.

Reading!

• As you can probably see, this month's reading was a somewhat eclectic mix. I'm not sure if it's actually more eclectic than my average reading month or if I'm just in a mood while I'm writing this, but there was a lot of variety.
• I'm finally back to rereading The Lord of the Rings, as you can see. I'd been procrastinating on The Two Towers because, while I quite enjoy the first half of the book, Frodo and Sam's journey from the Great River to Mordor is one of my least favorite parts of the trilogy. (Granted, it does have one of my favorite LOTR quotes and one of my favorite characters in it, so that helps. But it's still . . . y'know.) But I got some extra motivation in the form of needing to refresh my memory of the book's events, and I'm glad I finally got back to it.
• I had two read-for-review books this month: Bryan Davis's Invading Hell and Suzannah Rowntree's A Vampire in Bavaria. Both were excellent, and Invading Hell was a pleasant surprise — I was worried that it, like the first book, would end up amplifying my stress rather than providing an escape. However, it ended up having much more of a classic Davis book vibe than I expected, almost reminding me of some of the Oracles of Fire novels. I suspect it'll end up being my favorite in the trilogy.
• And, of course, I loved A Vampire in Bavaria. This time, I was ready for more action and less mystery (so I didn't experience that same twinge of missed expectations I did in Anarchist), and the story itself was absolutely thrilling. I made the mistake of picking it up after ten in the evening, thinking I could read a few chapters and then set it down again like I usually would — and then it was 11:30, and I was on Chapter 11, so I decided I'd read one more chapter so I could end on a good number — and then I didn't end until the book did. Oops.
• And the last exciting read of the month was The Green Ember, which has been quietly blinking out at the edge of my radar for quite a while — the author is part of the Rabbit Room, I think, or is otherwise associated with Andrew Peterson — but which was pushed to much higher priority by the fact that a new friend of mine kept posting fanart for it, and I got curious. So I read it and quite enjoyed it, even if I did occasionally have to stop and question the author's character-naming choices. (There's a rabbit named Kyle, and he has roughly the personality you'd expect from a human by that name. He confuses me on many, many levels. He's not a main character, thankfully.) 
• Names aside, though, it's a good story, and the main characters are a very satisfying balance of reasonably competent but still inexperienced, and, yeah, I guessed what Smalls's deal was in the first chapter he was onscreen, but I'm ok with that. And I definitely requested the rest of the series from the library when I was about 60 pages out from the end of the first book.
• And a quick mention of my other reads this month: The Language of Thorns was a really cool anthology of in-world folktales from the Grishaverse, and now I kinda feel like I should do a better job thinking through my own worlds' folklore. Met by Midnight was a reasonably interesting twist on Cinderella and a nice distraction on the random day when my office lost internet access all day, but it's far from my favorite retelling. And my reread of Elantris was a nice next step in my Cosmere reread.

Watching!

• Pretty much the most noteworthy bit of the month on this front was probably re-watching the Fellowship of the Ring (extended edition, naturally) with my family towards the beginning of the month. Though — and I kind of feel like a horrible person for this — I honestly wasn't excited about watching it? It wasn't even my suggestion; my dad is the one who's been suggesting LOTR any time we're talking about watching a movie. And I kept putting it off with the excuse that my sister would be disappointed if we watched them without her — until now, obviously, because my sister was here and did want to watch the movie.
• I don't even know why I wasn't more enthusiastic about the idea. I should've been enthusiastic. I've repeatedly stated that The Lord of the Rings trilogy is my favorite movie/movie series, and I still hold to that statement. But when it came up in discussion, I just . . . wasn't excited. I don't know. Maybe I was remembering all my frustrations with the movie more keenly than the things I love about it. Maybe I was intimidated by the probability that if we started watching the trilogy, even if we watched each movie in halves (which is what we're doing), I was committing to the equivalent of two movies a weekend for at least three weeks. Or maybe it was just one of those scenarios where the weight of the excitement and hype I thought I was supposed to feel started pressing so hard that it turned into dread instead. That's happened, sometimes. It's a primary reason why I sometimes take ages upon ages to read a book I've, up to that point, been really excited for. I don't know.
• Anyway. The point is, we watched Fellowship, and I certainly enjoyed it, even if I wasn't excited about it. I was less frustrated with Frodo's tendency to stare dramatically than I remembered being, which was a plus. And I'd forgotten how much of the dialogue actually is pulled straight from the book.
• On the downside, I have . . . well, I didn't actually read The Silmarillion, but I read a lot about the events of The Silmarillion, and now I'm about 300% more annoyed at the absence of Glorfindel than I was back when I just thought he was a cool character. Like, for conservation of detail, I understand the switch, but . . . bleh. I also think that Tolkien had the right idea in the books, keeping Arwen and Aragorn's romance largely "off-screen" and showing it mostly through other methods, thereby preserving the more . . . mythic, I guess, element of it. (Feel free to take that opinion with as much salt as you like, though. I tend to not be enthusiastic about on-screen romances in general, and that, along with characters' communication skills, tends to be the first thing critique in any film.)
• (Also, unpopular opinion, but leaving out Tom Bombadil was 100% the right choice. Younger me may have said otherwise. Younger me also was trying to shape a large portion of her identity around being a "hardcore" Tolkien fan. Tom Bombadil and the Old Forest are great in the books for worldbuilding, theme, and tension purposes. But in the movie, they truly aren't necessary.)
• Outside of Fellowship, I've pretty much just been watching — you guessed it! — more Critical Role. I just finished Episode 66 the other night, and . . . to be honest, I'm ready to move on from Xhorhas, just like I was ready to move on from Fjord's pirate arc a few months ago. Mostly, I'm tired of the Mighty Nein's attitude. But we seem to be moving in a cool (though creepy) direction with the end of the last episode, so I'm excited for that!
• Also, I keep hearing that Campaign 2 is probably going to wrap up soon, which is kind of exciting for me in that it means Campaign 3 will be right around the corner (albeit after a hiatus, probably). And that means I'll have the option to at least start the episodes when they're live as opposed to, y'know, two years after they happen. It'll mean splitting my attention between two campaigns, but I can live with that, especially since there'll no longer be any pressure to "catch up."

Life!

• We saw an owl! In our YARD! Not only that, in a tree right outside the office window! It was very exciting.
• In other news, my sister's back! And that's made me happy. It's nice to have someone around who's a little closer to my own age (and who shares most of my interests). We've played a few rounds of Sentinels, and I introduced her to Portal. (I also started replaying Portal, but I'm doing it in tandem with her — so, we do the same rooms at the same time, so I can more effectively provide hints and help when she needs it and so I have the fun of playing it. The added benefit is that, because we're only playing when we can play together, it doesn't become a temptation for either of us to spend too much time on.)
• Mother's Day was pretty chill as a holiday. We played some Yahtzee and watched the second half of The Fellowship of the Ring, my sister and I made food, and . . . that's pretty much it. Unless I'm forgetting something. Which is always possible.
• Probably the most exciting thing that happened this month was a visit to a historic mansion and its gardens/grounds (mostly the gardens/grounds because we weren't allowed in the mansion) courtesy of my dad's photo club's lack of a year-end party. (As in, they didn't have a year-end party, so they spent the money on admission for this instead). We had a nice time walking around and taking pictures, and I convinced my sister to dress up a bit so I could do some portrait photography, which was fun. The pictures mostly seem to have turned out reasonably well, though I do apparently suffer from an inability to hold the camera straight half the time. Oh well. That's what the crop tool is for.
• Work continues to be, well, business as usual. Things are quieting down now, since Easter (and Pentecost) is past and less happens in the summer. Well, that's not quite true. Stuff still happens . . . it's just not as intense as Easter week or the newsletter. Or figuring out the livestreaming system. (This is a good thing in that it means I'm less stressed about my actual work. It's not a great thing in that it gives me more time to get frustrated with people .  . . well, mostly one person who has a habit of asking me to update, design, or post things and then not giving me all the information I need, even when I ask multiple times. Given that this is the only significant job-based frustration I have on a regular basis, I am absolutely not complaining. I'm still annoyed, though.)
• (Also, I realized that this is basically just another variation on the same problem that caused me 99% of my stress my junior year of college, and I'm just like . . . gah. I can't even solve this one by doing what needs to be done for the person who didn't do it because, again, I'm lacking fundamental information and resources. Is this going to be my entire life? Because it's starting to feel like this is going to be my entire life.)
• On the baking front, I made sourdough bagels (which turned out much better than the non-sourdough ones I made two months ago) and a chocolate cake (because I have basically no experience with cake-making, and I thought I should fix that.)
• And we'll wrap this up with a D&D update! We only met a couple times this month, thanks to people having to deal with stuff like, y'know, finals and travel and work. Sadly, we lost one of our players, at least temporarily. We hope he'll be able to come back once his job situation is sorted out, but for now, we're operating as if he won't be returning. And then we had our first PC death (not counting the PC who turned on the party ages ago) the same session. He got better (because guess who has Revivify now? me, that's who), but it was still intense.

June Plans

• You know how I normally take a blogging hiatus in April because it's Camp NaNoWriMo and finals and all that jazz? And you know how I didn't take a hiatus in April this year because I'd been going at a Camp NaNo pace all year already and I didn't have finals? Yeah. Turns out that hiatus was important.
• So, yes. I'll be taking a blogging hiatus in June. I'll still be reading other people's blogs and hanging out on Facebook and Instagram, and I'll probably try to put up my Summer 2021 reads post sometime before summer starts. But I won't be posting other than that until July (or at least until June Doings).
• What will I be doing instead? Most significantly, I intend to have the second draft of Gilded in Ice finished and ready for other people to read and return comments on by the end of the month. This is way later than I wanted it to be done, but it is what it is, and I'm planning on a later release, so I should still have time enough.
• I also have a wedding to attend in June, which I'm excited for. It'll be a chance to see a lot of my close friends who I haven't seen in person in a year or more, so that makes up for all the driving I'll have to do to get to it.
• And I also think that the current D&D arc I'm running will probably wrap up this month! Assuming we actually manage to meet more than twice in the whole month, that is. After we finish the arc, we'll probably take a break from playing for a bit so I can write what happens next. One thing I'm certain of: while this was fun, I'm going to try to avoid planning such lengthy modules in the future.

How was your May? Any exciting plans for June? Or for the summer in general? And do you ever have the problem of "I should be excited for this because I love it, but I'm not actually excited?" Please tell me in the comments!
Thanks for reading!

February is Fantasy Month: Fandom VS. Fandom

 

So, today's post (and last week's post) was supposed to be about spoilers. Specifically, it was going to be about how spoilers affect how much someone enjoys a story. I did not finish writing that post. Instead, I started second-guessing myself, and in the end, I came to the conclusion that one analysis-type post in a month is enough and that the spoiler thoughts can wait until I have my thoughts in better order.

Instead, I'm tackling two of the Fantasy Month prompts at once and taking on some of the biggest battles in fandom — or, rather, between fandoms. We've probably all had to answer the Marvel or DC or Star Wars or Star Trek question or something similar at some point. And for this week's post, I'm taking on five such questions (three of which were helpfully supplied by my wonderful friends via text and Instagram), rapid-style. Which fandoms will prevail? Let's find out!

 

Fandom vs. Fandom

1. Marvel vs. DC? In most cases, I am an MCU girl through and through. I don't have time for unending angst and grittiness in books, much less movies, and Marvel gets that. Plus, they have Thor, Captain America, and Doctor Strange, who happen to be my three favorite superheroes. The exception? If you compare the two fandom-favorite "families" — which is to say, Irondad/Spiderson and the Batfam, the Batfam wins every single time by virtue of having a reasonable amount of canon backing and being delightfully chaotic and dramatic. (Granted, I've never actually picked up a Batman comic book or watched the animated series, so it's technically a secondhand fandom, but I've read enough of the actual comics reposted to various internet sites that I practically feel like it should count as a proper one of my fandoms at this point.)
2. Star Wars vs. Star Trek? Firefly. The answer is Firefly. Is this a cop-out? Maybe. But Firefly is my story, and I'm sticking to it. And it basically has the elements I like best from each of the other stories (the unpolished-ness and adventure and action and underdog/rebel narrative of Star Wars; the variety and exploration and some of the philosophicalness of Star Trek) wrapped up together with heists and found family — and, look, Han Solo is awesome, and I like Jean-Luc Picard, but Captain Mal Reynolds is where it's at.
3. The Lord of the Rings vs. Narnia? First off, I didn't think this was a competing fandom set, but it was suggested to me twice, so I'm going with it. Technically, I should probably say LOTR — when people ask me for my top three favorite series, LOTR is always in my answer, and Narnia is almost never. But I've also lived much more in Narnia than I have in Middle Earth, in that I've known it longer and read and listened to Narnia many more times. I suppose I'd have to say that LOTR is my favorite in terms of story and world — but Narnia is still, in many ways, home.
4. Disney/Pixar vs. Dreamworks? I wasn't going to do this one because I couldn't think of any Dreamworks movies I'd actually watched. And then I decided to double-check that and realized that wait a moment, Dreamworks did How to Train Your Dragon??? And that put enough weight on Dreamworks' side of the scale that the question was worth answering. Disney/Pixar still wins by virtue of Tangled, Beauty and the Beast (the original one, not the live-action one), and Big Hero Six. Also by virtue of not being responsible for a certain stupid movie about snails. But, if I actually watched all the animated movies I've been meaning to see for, oh, going on ten years now*, Dreamworks would have a very good chance.
5. Harry Potter vs. Percy Jackson? I'm pretty sure these aren't competing as much as they did similar things for consecutive generations, but I do know that both fandoms are still very active, so! I prefer Percy Jackson (specifically, Olympians and Heroes of Olympus; I didn't read anything after HoO ended) . . . mostly because Harry Potter uses a particular trope that just rubs me all the wrong ways, while Percy Jackson got an initial boost from my enduring love of mythology. Plus, I just like the PJO/HoO characters better than the Harry Potter characters. 

What's your position on any or each of these debates? Are there any big fandom vs. fandom questions that I missed? Please tell me in the comments!
Thanks for reading!

*This is list is also known as "All the movies that my friends/the internet were obsessed with back in 2013 or so.

October 2020 Doings!

Oh, look. It's November now. Everyone still alive? Reasonably sane? Fabulous. We all know that October basically lasted 0.05 seconds, but we're going to recap it anyway, because that's what we do.

Writing!

• October was kind of a mixed month on the writing front. To start on a happy note, I finished Blood in the Earth (huzzah!)! It's going to take a lot of editing, and the last page of my notebook is literally a list of all the things I want to fix when I rewrite the story. Including but not limited to: fixing the timeline, reconfiguring at least one subplot, establishing the existence of certain things that prove essential to the climax, and, oh yeah, reworking characterization in the first half of the book to be consistent with the end because my relationship with most of the characters in this book can be summarized in the following meme:

• But the point is: it's done, and the climax turned out really cool and genuinely kinda cinematic (like, I want there to be a movie or an anime of this book so I can watch the climax onscreen), and the ending is a good balance of bittersweet and truly happy, and all those unexpected character twists spawned possibilities for two or three short stories or spin-off novellas, so we're all good.
• Anyway. Having finished BitE, I jumped headfirst back into working on my D&D campaign so I could get it written and ready to the point where I probably won't have to work on it much at all in November, other than the usual prep for actually running sessions. Well, I do have one side-quest I might need to write, but, worst-case scenario, I'll improv. It'll be fine. (Fiiiiine.)
• Then, once I was satisfied with where my D&D campaign was, I switched gears and started prepping for the sequel to The Midnight Show! For those who missed my Know the Novel post last Friday, the TMS Sequel is a retelling of Snow White and Rose Red and maaaaaaaybe one other secret fairy tale. Bastian is back with a new case, and now his sisters are in the picture too . . . except that one of them is missing.
• So, yeah. I started drafting the novel pre-November, but it's also my NaNoWriMo novel, which is fun. (NaNoWriMo is going. I'm not making par for 50K most days, due to some other responsibilities that I'll talk about later in the post, but I'm making par for "Finish the book by the end of the month so you can edit in December," and that's what matters.)

 Reading!

• After a light and rough reading month in September, we've hit the rebound!
• I finished rereading Warden and the Wolf King and Fellowship of the Ring, which were both excellent as expected. I've missed Middle Earth more than I realized. I'm looking forward to The Two Towers — though I'm going to have to reevaluate my current reads a bit to figure out how to fit it in. I started reading Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell without realizing what kind of book it was, and I don't think I want to try to manage it and LOTR at the same time. I've become more open to reading two books at the same time (in a specific combination, where one is long and more of a classic feel that takes more focus and one is shorter and more modern and doesn't require a great deal of energy to enjoy), but yeah.
• I continued reading both the Delicious in Dungeon and Seven Deadly Sins manga series. Delicious in Dungeon got put on hold for a bit because I wanted some spookier or eerier reads for Halloween, but I'm still enjoying it, and I just picked book six up on Wednesday. So that's fun. Seven Deadly Sins, I'm having mixed feelings over. Most of the mixed feelings are about Ban — at first, I thought he was cool and interesting, and then it was like "No. He's a storming jerk." And then it was like "Shoot. He's still kind of a jerk, but also maybe not? And he is sort of interesting after all?" And it basically ended with "I'm attached to this character, but I'm really salty about it." I have this problem semi-frequently when it comes to manga and anime, for the record. Anyway. I'm four books in, and I'm not sure whether or not I'm going to continue the series. We'll see.
• And then we shift into my Halloween reads! Some of which ended up being less Halloween-ish than I expected. My reread of The Screaming Staircase was delightful, of course, though a little bit of the spookiness was lost in the reread. And The Hazel Wood was haunting and excellent, if a bit slow to get me really interested. I did not see the twists coming. It's an excellent take on portal fantasy, let me just say.
• Aunt Maria was not what I expected, but it was also excellent. DWJ references the book a lot in the essays in Reflections, so this has been on my TBR for a while. I'm glad I finally picked it up. My other DWJ read, Wild Robert, was smaller and weirder than I expected — a fun short story, true, and funny as well, but not my favorite DWJ. I was hoping to fit one more DWJ in here, Fire and Hemlock, but that didn't happen, sadly.
• To finish up this summary, we have two murder mysteries that couldn't be more different. I finally dipped my toes in the Harry Dresden series with Storm Front, and I have mixed feelings — basically, it's a fascinating world, an excellent story, and some genuinely interesting characters, but it's also a bit more than expected in terms of how dark it is and how blatantly it discusses certain topics. Like, I knew it would be darker than most of my reads. I knew it involved those topics, which is why I didn't read it ages ago. I just didn't expect how much. And now I'm torn between wanting to know more of the story (especially since I've heard the books do keep getting better) and . . . yeah.
• Anyway. The other murder mystery was pretty much the exact opposite of the Dresdenverse: A Morbid Taste for Bones, the first of the Chronicles of Brother Cadfael. I have to say, why did I not pick up this book sooner? It's historical fiction, true, but the good kind. And it kind of has the feel of . . . I don't know, like someone distilled the vibes out of Robin Hood and Ranger's Apprentice, poured it into a 12th-century monastery, and then added a heaping helping of murder mystery. Brother Cadfael is great, and the rest of the characters are interesting, and I am absolutely reading more of this series.
• Finally, a quick update on my reading goals.
  • I've met my overall goal for number of books read: 100 out of 99, as of Wednesday morning. So that's great. Not that it's going to stop me reading more, but y'know.
  • With the addition of A Morbid Taste for Bones, I've hit ten non-speculative fiction books, which means I have two to go. I did request several autobiographies from the library recently, though, and I'm planning to reread What If? soon, so that should be doable. With luck, I'll pass that goal too.
  • And I'd already hit my goal of twelve books written before I was born, but I've gotten all the way up to 16 at this point — still counting the whole Redwall series as one book. At some point, I should go through and see how many of those 16 are DWJ books, but we'll save that for my end-of-year recap.

Watching!

• So, I've officially seen both Men in Black and The Matrix now, so that's fun.
• I actually really liked Men in Black. Were there elements I wasn't a fan of? Sure. But it's kind of the sci-fi equivalent of urban fantasy, and it has a good balance of humor and serious moments. Sure, there were some cringe bits and some gross moments, but it was still a lot of fun. And I really appreciate that even the occasional secondhand embarrassment came out of J being genuinely excited or curious or wanting to help people (or occasionally the fact that he's too busy getting stuff done and thinking for himself to care about what everyone else in the room things, which I can also get behind).
• The Matrix was interesting and weird and . . . I mean, I can see why it's such a cultural phenomenon and why it's considered such a major sci-fi movie. It is a genuinely good movie. And, I mean, yes, it is in many respects a fairly standard Chosen One narrative, and a wish-fulfillment-y one at that, and pretty much everyone except Tank and the Oracle feels like they're going out of their way to be as dramatic as possible 100% of the time. And I could've done without some of the body horror. But there were some good twists on the tropes as well, and overdramatic or not, the fight scenes get full points for style.
• Other than that, it's pretty much the same as usual. Still watching Firefly with the fam (two more episodes in, and I'd forgotten how much I enjoy the episode Bushwacked). Still slowly making my way through Critical Role and kind of amused by the fact that Travis himself seems so genuinely freaked out/concerned by all his backstory-related stuff that's happening. It's like . . . honestly, I relate. But also, it's funny.
• (But I'm still only to . . . 37? 38? Something like that? And that's with watching since May-ish. So, yeah. Slow going.)

Life!

• So, the most exciting thing that happened this month is probably that my family finally got proper internet. For context: for the past three years, ever since my family moved back to Virginia, we'd been working off a mobile hotspot because we didn't have any other internet options available. And it worked, mostly — true, it was tiresome having to schedule our online activities around whether we had high-speed or low-speed data, and true, it was a bit annoying to have to go somewhere else (or else disconnect all but one device) when we needed to do a video call or download updates on a device or anything else like that. And, of course, it was kind of problematic in March and April when the libraries and other places we'd usually go to use the WiFi closed. But, y'know. It worked, and it was better than nothing at all.
• But now we have actual internet, thank God. And it is so nice to be able to just . . . do stuff. To not have to worry about whether we're on fast or slow data, or whether I can get to the library to download stuff I need to download, or whether or not my D&D group can actually meet via Zoom or if we have to do it via voice on Discord. I can apply for remote-work jobs without wondering if I'll be able to make meetings and complete projects if I get it. I don't even have to worry about whether or not I'm slowing down someone else's internet activities with mine. It's wonderful.
• Anyway. The other exciting thing that happened this month was that I almost had a job. Almost. There was an actual offer — well, not exactly. There were some emails, and an (astonishingly short) interview, and then a statement: You can start training on [date] at [time]. It felt off. So I emailed back to find out things like How much are you paying me, and What about benefits, and Why exactly do you think I need three months of training when I could've done most of what you want me to do before I went to college? And through his response to those questions and some conversations with a very helpful family friend with plenty of business sense, we figured out, in short, that this company was trying to pay (or, more accurately, underpay) me as a freelancer while having me work as if I were a full-time employee. Which, my friends, I was having none of. 
• So, at the suggestion of the very helpful family friend, I emailed back to point out the discrepancies and give the company a chance to try to correct themselves. The response to which was, in short Hello, I think you'd be a better fit somewhere else, good luck, goodbye. So that was that, and I have no regrets.
• And then I went through interviews at two other jobs and didn't get those either, which is a bit disappointing. Both of them were much closer to what I actually want to do, and with companies I would've actually liked to work for. But it is what it is, and, as I already said, now I can apply for remote-work jobs, and even freelance for a while if I so choose. (Which I am doing a little bit of right now; a friend of a friend's family needed some logos and brand work done, and that friend's family pointed him to me. So that's my other big project at the moment.) And sooner or later, something will work out. God knows what's up.
• Anyway. On a happier note, I finally finished the cloak I've been working on for over a year, and I got to wear it to an actual event. My church did a drive-through Trunk or Treat, and I signed up to man a trunk — which basically meant dressing up, decorating, and then sitting there and waving to people as they drove through. It wasn't the most exciting time, plus it rained, but hey! My cloak turned out well! I think I'm still going to make some more adjustments; namely, I'm going to add a second fastener (possibly two more, one of them hidden), and I'm going to add more reinforcement to keep it from stretching out. But it's comfortable to wear and doesn't threaten to choke me, so that's good. (I don't have any good pictures at the moment, sorry.)
• I also made two pies (one pecan, one cheddar-pear), pretzel bites, and the first stage of improvements to the new sourdough bread recipe. As it turns out, weighing ingredients is exactly as overrated as I thought it was, and there's also no reason whatsoever to literally stick your hand in the bowl to mix it when there's a machine a yard away that can do the same thing but better. On the other hand, tipping the loaf out of the Dutch oven halfway through but not putting it on a tray or something when it goes back in the actual oven does not solve the problem of "the bottom crust is super hard" and, in fact, makes it much worse, in that it burns the bottom crust. So that's a thing we're not going to do next time.
• On the D&D front, one of my groups didn't meet at all in October, though we did meet this past Tuesday, which was a fun session — I finally got to use Toll the Dead, and I managed to stay out of melee range of the aberration that nearly killed our druid, and we met an NPC who was pretty interesting, and we finished a quest line, all in one day. It was great. In the other campaign I don't run, we've met a little more often and made a bit more progress, but the most exciting thing is that our group has an actual name now. We're officially the Light Bringers, which I'd say is a pretty snazzy name.
• And in Defenders of Serys (aka the campaign I do run), we spent more time than I expected on one piece of the story, but it's fine. We did officially make it out to see at last, we've had the first two thirds of our first pirate battle . . . and I remembered why I usually don't run big combats. But it's fine. I have very patient (and also terrifyingly effective at times) players.

November Plans

• It's NaNoWriMo. What do you think I'm doing?
• Ok, technically I'm not exactly doing the full 50K. I'd like to get a full 50K, but if I do, it'll be something along the lines of 35K first draft and 15K rewrites. But, as I said already, I'm working on the sequel to The Midnight Show, and it's going to be great.
• That said, even thought I'm not going for the full 50K, I am going to take a month's hiatus from regular blog posting. There'll be one or two posts for promo things, like the Perry Kirkpatrick Black Friday book sale, but that's all.
• Outside of writing, it's back to another round of job apps. Plus the freelance logo project, which is pretty interesting. We'll see what happens on that end.
• November is also Thanksgiving, which is going to be kind of weird. It'll be the first time in a long while that we've had it at home and not with our Bible study. I really am disappointed that we won't get to have the full gathering or anything like it, but it is what it is.
• Also my birthday's in November, so, y'know, that's a thing.
• In whatever spare time I have left, I need to start thinking about Christmas presents, especially if I'm going to make anything. Which I might. You never know. And I get to start anticipating listening to Christmas music, which is quite exciting.

How was your October? Any exciting plans for November? Are you doing NaNoWriMo? Please tell me in the comments!
Thanks for reading!

Forging the Fellowship Tag!

Hey'a, everyone! So, it has, in fact, been actual ages since I did a tag. I think. Let me check.

Ok, so apparently "actual ages" means "slightly less than six months." Or, if you include my other blog, right around two months. In all fairness, though, one of those months was March, which we all know was secretly a full year stuffed inside a month-sized suitcase. Anyway. Jem Jones tagged me in the Forging the Fellowship blog tag (created by Julia at Lit Aflame), in which you forge your own Fellowship out of book characters. Sounds fun, yeah? I think so, and thus I'm doing it now before I forget about it.

On a side note — over at Light and Shadows, I'm joining the blog tour for H.S.J. Williams's Moonscript, which just released yesterday. I'm sharing my full thoughts in this week's Friday 5s post, but the long story short is that it's an excellent book and you all should go buy it. Also, check back here on Wednesday for another post about the book. We'll see what it's going to be; I haven't decided yet. Anyway. ON WITH THE TAG!

1. [The Ring Bearer]: If you could choose, which of the four races would you be: Elf, Dwarf, Human, or Hobbit?
Ok, first of all, who the pumpernickel made me the Ring Bearer? I am a terrible choice for this for so many reasons. (Not least of which: I'd probably lose the thing. And then someone would be like "Sarah, where's the One Ring?" And I'd be like "Well, I had it when I was trying to find that one notebook . . . um . . . maybe it's in the box with the other notebooks? Or the other box with the notebooks? Or my desk drawer? Or buried in the piles of stuff on my desk? I don't know."

Anyway. If you asked me this five years ago, I would've said elf without hesitation. And it's still a strong consideration. But, let's be real, I'm much more hobbit-like. 

2. [Gandalf the Grey]: A wise/powerful elder/mentor character:
Fun fact: apparently I have somehow never written a "favorite mentors" list, at least not that I can find. I'm not sure how that happened in a full six years of weekly list posts, but yeah. So this question just got that much harder.

That said, I'm going with a bit of an unconventional choice: a character who's actually primarily known as a protagonist, but who grows into a mentor to other characters after a while. Who is this? Sapphira Adi from Bryan Davis's Oracles of Fire and Children of the Bard series, specifically from just before the CotB era, when she's had quite a bit of leadership experience on top of her several thousand years of life experience. While not my favorite mentor or my favorite character in general, Sapphira Adi, as an Oracle of Fire, does have the wisdom to lead a group, the spiritual discipline and power to deal with all the nastiness and terrifying enemies associated with the One Ring quest, and the patience to handle everyone else being overdramatic and ridiculous.

3. [Aragorn]: A character with good survival skills:
This one's an easy choice! We're calling in Errance from Moonscript! As a half-Celestial, half-earth elf, he's very at home in the wilderness, and as the story proves, he's a very capable defender of both himself and others. Granted, the fact that he'd have minions of Darkness after him particularly might make the quest a little difficult . . . but, let's be real, we're going to have enemies aplenty anyway. What's a few more?

4. [Boromir]: A character who makes mistakes, but has a good heart: 
It's more like "one fairly major mistake" than mistakes plural (and therefore a bit of a stretch, but I want him on the team), but we're picking Artham Wingfeather of The Wingfeather Saga for this category. Specifically, Book 3 (or late Book 2) Artham. Or possibly post-series Artham. Anyway. Artham is probably my favorite character from the Wingfeather Saga, and yes, he did have a pretty major moment of weakness, but, y'know? That doesn't change the fact that he's loyal and courageous and loving when it matters most.

5. [Gimli]: A stubborn character:
Stars, who wouldn't fit this category? I'm pretty sure that if there's one defining trait all my favorite characters share, it's that they're all pretty stubborn. (Keep in mind that determined and stubborn are synonyms, yeah?) So, who will it be? After much thought, I'm going with Robin from the Bookania Quests. She's definitely very stubborn, but in a reasonably levelheaded way. (Or, at the very least, she's not angsty. She's very straightforward, honestly.) She's capable, she's clever, she's a masterful swordswoman, and she lets exactly nothing stop her from accomplishing her goals.

6. [Legolas]: A character who is talented: 
Ok, is there actually any question here? If I'm assembling my own quest team, it absolutely has to include Bard Eanrin of the Tales of Goldstone Wood. Eanrin is a cat-faerie of many talents, including, but not limited to, singing, poetry, creating distractions, being a cat, annoying the forces of evil (and sometimes also the forces of good, but y'know), and denying his feelings/lying to himself for years on end. As a bonus, this means we have two of my favorite fictional poets (Artham and Eanrin) in the same party, which I think sounds great.

7. [Peregrin Took]: A character who at first seems useless, but ends up surprising you:
So, I had a pretty major debate for this spot: Steris from the second era of Mistborn? Or Matrim Cauthon from the Wheel of Time series? Both of them fit very well. I mean, "initially seems useless but surprises you in the end" sums up Steris's arc very well, and it's part of the reason why I love her so much. As a bonus, all the things that make you underestimate her are the things that prove essential in the end. (Plus, if she joins the party, then Waximillian Ladrian has to come along and I get a bonus gunslinger/Misting.)

And then Mat plays a very Pippin-ish role at the start of his series — the prankster, the one who touches things he's not supposed to, so forth — but even by Book 5 (which is the last one I've read; I need to get back to the series; don't judge me), he's coming to his own as astonishingly resourceful, skilled, and intelligent — all backed up by some serious luck.

In the end, though, I would probably pick Mat for one simple reason: he's familiar with the type of world we're dealing with. Steris (and Wax) are from a world that's a bit more Old West/Victorian-esque. Mat, on the other hand, is from a medieval-esque world that's much closer to Middle Earth in terms of cultures and technology and all that. So, he'll be able to adapt much more easily to this new location. (On a side note, we're getting Mat of anytime after about the halfway point of Book 3, but ideally Book 5.)

8. [Meriadoc Brandybuck]: A character who is small/not very strong, but has great courage:
Let's go back to an old friend and get Kale Allerion from the DragonKeeper Chronicles on this quest. Granted, by the end of the series, Kale is quite capable as a wizard, dragon keeper, and warrior, but we're calling specifically on Book 3 Kale, who's competent but still has a fair bit of learning to do. As a bonus, Kale brings with her a watch of clever, colorful minor dragons, all of whom also fit this category. Huzzah!

9. [Samwise Gamgee]: A character who is extremely loyal and doesn’t give up:
Adolin. Adolin. Storming Adolin Kholin. Absolutely, no question. He has many, many excellent qualities (he was second choice for a talented character, after Eanrin), but one of his best qualities is his loyalty — to his family, to his friends, to his duty. He makes a habit of standing by people in desperate situations. Of never giving up. And if you know him and you don't agree, I'm sorry, have we read the same book? When his father is going mad, when the world is being turned upside down (and then upside down again, and again, and again), when his friends are falling apart — he's there. Even when he's hurting as deeply as anyone else, he's standing up and keeping everyone else going and looking for hope. And so who else could I pick for this spot?

How would this group do on an actual quest? It's hard to say, and a lot of it depends on how broody Errance decides to be and how well Artham and Eanrin get along. I feel like those three would take up most of the attention while the rest of us quietly got stuff done. (That is, until we got attacked, at which point everyone is very helpful except me and half the group ends up showing off because, quite frankly, when you have a terrifyingly competent elf prince, a Throne Warden, the best swordswoman in the world, and an extremly skilled Shardbearer and duelist in the group, they're probably eventually going to get to the point of trying to show each other up. And then you have Sapphira Adi and Kale throwing around fire and wizardry, respectively, and Mat being like "Light burn these people, so extra" while being intensely extra himself. And I'm just like ". . . Imma hide and not die now, ok, thanks. Lemme know when it's safe to come out.")
 

And now we come to the part of the show where I tag people. Um. We're going to tag Deborah O'Carroll (when she comes back from hiatus) and beyond that, if you want to do this, consider yourself tagged. I can't keep track of who's actually still blogging and who's on hiatus and who still does tags and who doesn't. So. Yeah.

If you decide to do this tag, you need to:

• Include the tag banner in your post
• Link back to the creator of the tag ( LITAFLAME.BLOG )
• Thank and link back to the person who tagged you
• Forge your Fellowship out of BOOK CHARACTERS by answering the given questions!
• Tag three bloggers to pass the ring to. 

And here's a clean copy of the questions:
1. [The Ring Bearer]: If you could choose, which of the four races would you be: Elf, Dwarf, Human, or Hobbit?
2. [Gandalf the Grey]: A wise/powerful elder/mentor character:
3. [Aragorn]: A character with good survival skills:
4. [Boromir]: A character who makes mistakes, but has a good heart:
5. [Gimli]: A stubborn character:
6. [Legolas]: A character who is talented:
7. [Peregrin Took]: A character who at first seems useless, but ends up surprising you:
8. [Meriadoc Brandybuck]: A character who is small/not very strong, but has great courage:
9. [Samwise Gamgee]: A character who is extremely loyal and doesn’t give up:

Even if you don't feel like doing the tag, what do you think of my choices? And who do you think you'd pick? Please tell me in comments!
Thanks for reading!
-Sarah (Leilani Sunblade) 

Would You Rather . . .? Tolkien Edition!

So, for those who are unaware, this is Tolkien Week, and Edge of the Precipice is hosting their annual Tolkien Blog Party! As usual, the party includes a fun blog tag, and this year's is a "Would You Rather?" game. I thought it sounded like fun, so I'm joining in here at Dreams and Dragons. Over at Light and Shadows, I'm posting about my favorite Tolkien poetry, so make sure you check that out too!

Would You Rather . . . ? Tolkien Edition!

1.  ...join Thorin's Company or the Fellowship?
Well, on one hand, I do love the adventure of The Hobbit, and I'm probably a bit less likely to die in Thorin's Company than in the Fellowship. Plus, my presence would bring the total to fifteen, which is an even better number than fourteen. On the other hand, I can very much get behind the Fellowship's mission, and I think I'd get along with the group a lot better, so we're going with the Fellowship (even if I would mess up the numbering).

2.  ...ride Shadowfax or an eagle?
Ok, here's the thing. Shadowfax is great, but he's just a horse. A super-fast horse, but still a horse. I'm pretty sure that if I tried, I could find somewhere in this world to ride horses. (Also, I've ridden horses before and was not terribly impressed.) Riding an eagle, on the other hand? Definitely a once-in-a-lifetime experience, definitely not something I could do just anywhere, so I'm going with that one.

3.  ...travel through Moria or Mirkwood?
Mirkwood. Absolutely Mirkwood. Yes, I hate spiders, but you know what else is in Mirkwood? Elves. I like elves. So all I have to do is survive long enough to find the elves (or be found by them) and I'm good. Moria, on the other hand? Full of skeletons and darkness and orcs. Not somewhere I want to go questing if I can avoid it.

4.  ...learn to make elvish rope or mithril chainmail?
Both. Absolutely both. Rope-making sounds like a generally interesting and useful skill and possibly something that I can do while listening to things to keep my hands busy. Chainmail is less practical, but who doesn't secretly want mithril chainmail? And I've always been kind of curious about the process. Basically, I like doing things with my hands, and I want to try all the things, and you can't make me choose.

5.  ...try to outwit Smaug or Saruman?
Smaug. Definitely Smaug. My chances aren't great either way, but I can absolutely lay on the flattery with Smaug (and probably do so honestly), while I don't think that strategy would work for Saruman, even if I could pull it off. (Also, I'd rather punch Saruman in the face for being a traitor and a fool than talk to him, SO.)

6.  ...spend an hour with Grima Wormtongue or Denethor?
Let's weigh the options here. On one hand, we've got a slimy, snakish creep of a man who's literally in league with evil. On the other, we have a man who has serious issues but at least tried to stand against the shadow (and actually succeeded for a while). I think I will take the latter, thanks.

7.  ...attend Faramir's wedding or Samwise's wedding?
Why not both? But if I have to pick, Sam and Rosie's wedding. I love Faramir and Eowyn dearly; they're some of my favorite characters. But I have a suspicion that their wedding would be very formal and stuff, while Sam and Rosie's would be much more comfortable and less imposing.

8.  ...have to care for the One Ring or the Arkenstone for a day?
Arkenstone, thanks. I can handle a glowy gemstone. Evil artefact of significant power that has a tendency to mess with the minds (and hearts) of its keepers? Maybe, but I'd rather not risk it.

9.  ...have tea with Bilbo or Frodo? 
Both. But if I have to pick, Bilbo, ideally a couple years after his adventure. I generally feel like Bilbo and I would get along well, and I know he'd have good stories. (Even if I already know his whole adventure, I suspect that there are smaller stories that didn't make it into the main narrative.)

10.  ...fight alongside Boromir or Eomer?
So, both Boromir and Eomer are great. Amazing characters, even if one of them had a tragic end. In terms of personality alone, I'd probably pick Eomer . . .  but in terms of practicality? I can't ride a horse well, so I'm not a great choice for a Rider of Rohan. Fighting on foot, however, I can probably manage, especially if you stretch the definition of alongside to include archer or another variety of ranged fighter. Not that I'd be great at that either . . . but y'know. You do what you can.

How would you answer these questions? Please tell me in the comments or feel free to pick up the tag yourself! I can't wait to see your thoughts!
Thanks for reading!
-Sarah (Leilani Sunblade)