May 2017 Doings!

Hey'a, everyone! It's the end of another month- but not a crazy one, thankfully. Actually, this was the most relaxing month I've had in a while . . . but just because it was relaxing doesn't mean there's nothing to report here!

Writing!

• On the whole, this was a pretty good writing month, possibly because I spent a lot of time in the car (it's an excellent place to write because there's no internet to distract me and I'm too scared of wasting my battery to play Solitaire or Candy Crush) and possibly because I had no schoolwork, nice weather, and a few days with good motivation.
• In terms of actual writing, I completed two and a half flashfics (I'll post the two eventually, after I've edited them a bit) and a new scene in Destinies and Decisions. Editing was slightly less productive, but most of the work I did was on Destinies and Decisions, which I've been neglecting for a while now. (That was partially because of Camp NaNoWriMo and partially because I was procrastinating on rewriting another subplot.)
• In addition worked on random bits of worldbuilding (dragon Riders don't get concussions! but they do have problems with cancer), part of which I actually wrote down and part of which is still in my head. I've decided to finally create a file on Evernote for all my worldbuilding info instead of just keeping it in a standard notebook, so that (A)there's less chance of losing it and (B)I can access it at any time. I still have to copy all the stuff I've done before into the file, but . . . oh well. It's a start.
• Also, in case you missed it, I started posting Fight Song! So far, the prologue, and first two chapters are up. You don't have to read them, obviously, but if you haven't yet and you're interested . . .

Reading!

• As I already said, May was a pretty good writing month . . . but it was an even better reading month, with a lovely blend of rereads and new books, many of which people have been recommending to me for a while.
• In that latter category fits Plenilune, which came out . . . I want to say around the time the first Ilyon Chronicles was released? So it's been a few years, and it was before I really bought new books that I hadn't read yet. I'm honestly glad I didn't read it then; I don't think I would've appreciated it as much as I did reading it now. It is an amazing book, though dark enough in places that I'd recommend it more for mature readers.
• Also in that category goes The Firethorn Crown, which was a pretty cool 12 Dancing Princesses retelling that Deborah O'Carroll heartily recommended to me. I enjoyed it; there's dragons (including tiny butterfly dragons!), a reasonably creepy villain, and sisters being awesome and having each other's backs. It's not my favorite 12 Dancing Princesses retelling, but it's still good (and free on Kindle, if you're interested)! I didn't enjoy the sequel, The Midsummer Captives, quite as much, maybe because I didn't connect as much with the characters and maybe because I didn't realize until after the fact that it was a retelling of A Midsummer Night's Dream. It was still a good book, though, and had more dragons in it.
• The final book in the category of heartily-recommended-to-me-reads is The Lies of Locke Lamora- and, yes, when I say "recommended" here, I mostly mean "Cait Grace yelled about it on her blog so much that I got curious." I was rather less impressed by this one than by Plenilune or the Firethorn Crown books. Don't get me wrong, the story is great, the characters likeable (mostly), and the heists and intrigue as exciting as you might want. It honestly felt the same way I think a Mistborn prequel novel about Kelsier's old crew would feel. However, there was a lot of very strong language and not-entirely-appropriate references- so much that I almost put the book down only a tenth of the way in, and enough that I can't wholeheartily recommend the book myself.
• On the retelling side, we have the first three James Herriot biographies. I'm not sure these totally qualify as rereads, since I didn't read them myself; rather, my dad read them to me when I was younger. The whole matter started because I found the first book, All Creatures Great and Small, for 25 cents at a curriculum sale and decided to get it. I expected to be a few days getting through it (it's a relatively thick book, and I assume biographies are slow), but then I read it in roughly 24 hours and found myself in desperate need of the next one, All Things Bright and Beautiful. Thankfully, we owned that one already, and I got through it almost as quickly. The last two we had to get at the library, and I'm currently working on book three, All Things Wise and Wonderful, though not as quickly because I've been doing other things besides reading.
• A few other books that don't fit into the heartily-recommended-to-me or rereads categories: Wires and Nerve Volume 1 is the new Lunar Chronicles graphic novel; I enjoyed it, but felt like it should've been longer. Graphic novels are tricky that way. Long May She Reign was fantasy-mystery with a scientist protagonist: something different, definitely enjoyable, and surprisingly clean, though not as amazing as I hoped. And Carve the Mark is Veronica Roth's new book: sci-fi, on the darker side, not really what I expected but not bad.

Watching!

• So many things!
  
• Obviously, I finished watching Merlin and I was actually fairly satisfied with the ending? I mean, yes, I'm sad and now I want more than ever to write my modern-day continuation fanfic since BBC seems unwilling to give us a modern-day reboot. But I wasn't as upset as I expected to be.
  
  
• Then I came home and tackled all the movies I need to catch up on. I started with the Back to the Future trilogy, specifically the second and third movie. I almost think the second might be my favorite, which is weird since usually the second is the worst in any trilogy. And, yeah, I absolutely hated the first thirty minutes of the the movie. But I actually enjoyed the rest of it quite a bit. The third one was fun as well, since it was sort of a western but also not and I didn't have to deal with everyone dying in the end, which is what usually seems to happen in westerns.
  
  
• And then I moved on to what I was really looking forward to: the rest of the Marvel movies! All I had left was Guardians and the second two Captain America movies, plus I wanted to rewatch the first Captain America, just to refresh my memory. Guardians was fabulous- not my very favorite Marvel movie, but it's probably up there. Hopefully I'll be able to watch the second one more or less as soon as it comes out on DVD (or arrives on Netflix, if I can convince my roommate to watch it with me, since I don't think it'll be out until September).
• Then came the Captain America movies. Rewatching the first one was actually super refreshing for two reasons. For one thing, I knew everything that happened already, which prevented the panic moments ("He has to survive! There's another movie! Right?". For another, it's one of the few Marvel movies where I never feel the need to yell at the characters for being idiots/unreasonable/etc.
• Of course, The Winter Soldier and Civil War were considerably less relaxing . . . though TWS wasn't nearly as emotionally draining as I expected it to be. The fact that I knew most of the major twists already helped a lot. Civil War was another story- but I already posted my thoughts on it, so I won't repeat myself here.

Musings!

• You don't have to understand something to love it; you don't have to know everything about something to like it; you don't have to be good at something to enjoy it. So often in the fandom world (and outside it too), you feel like you don't really love something if you don't know all the trivia, if you can't quote half the movie or all the best lines from the book, if you haven't read or watched it a dozen times. Or in terms of activities, people assume that if you enjoy doing something, you must be good at it in the sense of having a natural affinity for it, because why else would you keep doing it? But it's not like that. The fact that I do not know every little piece of LOTR trivia and haven't read The Silimarillion since I was eleven does not make me less of a LOTR fan than my friend whose favorite fictional character in the world is never mentioned in the main trilogy. The fact that I don't understand a lot of science and philosophy doesn't mean that I can't be fascinated by it, that I can't enjoy learning about it, that I can't appreciate all that those things give us. I can call myself a photographer even though I still don't get ISO and probably use Photoshop techniques that would make an experienced photographer recoil in horror. I can be a writer even though I don't always know what I'm doing and I couldn't explain the snowflake method to you if you offered me a million dollars. But that's ok. Storms, I don't always understand that which I love most- God, family, friends- but that doesn't mean I love them any less. And I think that's beautiful.

Life!

• Well, there's plenty to put in here, even if it has been a fairly relaxing month. Where to start, then? I suppose at the beginning- which was also an ending. Specifically, the end of my first year of college! Finals went well; I honestly think that I stressed more about packing than I did about any of my finals. Thankfully, I ended up having no finals Thursday, the day before I was supposed to leave, so I could just pack EVERYTHING and not have to go anywhere except to eat. I still ended up stressing most of the day, trying to fit everything into roughly as many boxes and suitcases as I had with me (and kind of failing because I'd accumulated way more stuff than I had at the beginning of the year, plus I'm not an efficient packer to begin with).
• We stopped at my grandpa's house for a day on the way home, which was nice. While we were there, my dad and I went on a photo expedition to Carrie Furnace, which used to be part of an old steel works and is now abandoned.
  
  
  

  Eventually I'm going to write a whole blog post about the experience and show off the pictures I took. I would've done it sooner, but all the movie-watching that I mentioned earlier kind of distracted me.
• Then we got home, I unpacked- which was easier than packing, since I knew already where most stuff was going to go- and also went through my clothes and books to decide what to keep and what to get rid of. Going through my personal bookshelves was the hardest part. I have a lot of books that I rarely, if ever, read, but I held onto because I liked them when I was younger, or because they're classics, or because I just feel like I should keep them even though I've outgrown them. But I managed, and so there's a little more space on my shelves . . . at least for now. I'm still going to try to convince my parents that I need another bookshelf later, even if I have to buy it myself.
• That brings us to roughly the 9th of May, and you know what I've mostly done since then? Absolutely nothing. Or, sort of. I did all the reading and writing and editing and movie-watching and such that I already mentioned, so that's something, but it's a different kind of something than what I'd been doing for the last nine months, and it's lovely. There's no deadlines. No places I have to be. No reason I can't spend the morning working on a story or sit outside with a book all afternoon. Of course, there's also nothing to keep me from wasting too much time on Pinterest, but oh well . . .
  
  
• The exception to the doing-of-nothing: last weekend, my family joined our Bible Study group from back in Virginia on a retreat at White Sulphur Springs. And, ok, there was a fair bit of doing-nothing there too. Technically I was supposed to help with meal prep, but there's a lot of other people who know a lot more about what they're doing in the kitchen than I do, so basically all I did was set stuff out on tables- and I wasn't even needed for that much, really. So I mostly ended up reading books in whatever comfortable spots I could find and chatting and playing games with friends and catching up on their lives.
• Oh, and for anyone who remembers that I was supposed to do the #Walk30DaysChallenge and is wondering how that's going, well, it kind of didn't work out as well as I hoped. Finals week kept me busy enough that I didn't have much time to go walking. Then I got home and it was cold and wet and I started thinking "Y'know, maybe I'll just wait and try this again in June." And then I realized that maybe that wasn't a great idea and put some effort into getting regular physical exercise the rest of the month. Thankfully, the weather warmed up a bit, which allowed me to go walking a fair number of days. Plus, I managed to come up with an alternate aerobics routine for when it's too rainy to walk, so that's something.

June Plans!

• First off: in case you can't guess from the fact that I'm posting this early or the fact that this happens basically every year: I'm going on hiatus for the next two weeks or so, during which I will have little, if any, internet access. You probably also know why I'm going on hiatus. I really don't know why I pretend you don't at this point, but I'm going to keep doing it anyway. I'd say not to go crazy while I'm gone, but I suspect that some of you won't even notice I'm not here.
• The exception to the hiatus: I will be participating on a pretty exciting cover reveal on June 1 through the magic of prescheduled posts. I'm not going to say what cover is being revealed; you'll just have to stop by and see. (I'm giving the screen a Significant Eyebrow Wiggle here. You can't see it, so you'll just have to imagine it.)
• During and after the hiatus, I hope to do quite a lot of reading and editing/writing. Usually I'm pretty productive during the hiatus; I generally average a book every two days, and I can often block out an hour or two solid for writing purposes. Hopefully that trend continues. And even after the hiatus, I shouldn't be super busy, so maybe I can keep up the pace?
• One thing I'm super excited for: the announcement of the fairytale for the next Five Something Somethings contest! This contest, run by Anne Elisabeth Stengl and Rooglewood Press, offers the challenge to retell a fairytale in a 20K word novella. It was canceled last year, much to my disappointment, and this is going to be the last year it's going to happen. The fairytale theme and the title of the book will be released on June 1, which means that it'll be time for me to start brainstorming so I can write my novella for July's Camp NaNoWriMo.
• Outside of reading and writing, I hope to keep up with the whole regular-exercise thing. We'll see how it goes; I have rather limited options for where I can walk right now, and I'm getting bored of my main route (which also happens to be the best route for walking in the area).
• There's also some stuff going on in mid-June that will keep me rather busy and might cause another brief hiatus from blogging (though not from the internet as a whole). However, I'm not sure what I can say about it right now, so . . .. yeah. Details will come when they can come.

How was your May? Any fun plans for June? Please tell me in the comments!
Thanks for reading!
-Sarah (Leilani Sunblade)  

August Doings!

Hello, everyone! August was another busy, change-filled month. That means this post might be pretty long . . . and I'm also going to do things a little out of order, so that things don't get out-of-context too much. So, to start out, Life!

Life!

•  Some of you (I hope most of you) may remember that last month's Doings post went up a little bit early, and that I proceeded to disappear for about two weeks after that. The reason? I was off in Rivendell, otherwise known as White Sulphur Springs. Like last year, I was part of the Support Staff, a group of teenage volunteers who basically help maintain the hotel and grounds. This year, my little sister came up with me, which was pretty awesome. Some other highlights and significant bits from our time up there:
• A mini-retreat at the start of our volunteer session. I might've freaked out a little, because the couple in charge of said mini-retreat referred to it as a mini-camping trip/adventure. I, fairly naturally, jumped straight to the extreme of sleeping in a tent (or possibly just under the stars), possibly in a location that we had to hike an hour to get to, probably cooking our own food over a campfire, and undoubtedly getting a maximum of four hours' sleep that night. I was, naturally, wrong- we were in cabins, maybe ten minutes' walk from the hotel, eating food catered by the hotel, and generally having a pretty good time. And while there were some girls who got only about four hours of sleep, I was not one of them- I don't think I got a full eight hours, but I got enough.
• I also got to see several of my friends from last year again, which was awesome! There was one person on Girls' Support Staff who'd been on it last year as well, two on Boys' Support Staff, and several people from both staffs who were serving in other positions. 
• Plus I made quite a few new friends . . . quite a lot of whom were fellow bookworms/writers! Never in my life had I found so many people in one physical place who love the same sort of things I love, and, guys, it was SO AWESOME. There were so many book-chats over meals . . . and one of the Support Staff guys and I chatted for literally hours about our stories and characters and creating characters . . . and I got to chat about writing and books and life in general with the Fine Arts Coordinator (who is awesome, by the way), and I got a bunch of book recommendations (several of which I proceeded to devour as soon as I could get them from the library) and yeah. Much awesomeness. And one of those friends also introduced me to the game SuperFight, which is basically hilarious. I might've spent a few hours playing that too . . .
• Oh, and square dance is still awesome. Though I did end sitting out a fair bit of dancing on the second night for various reason . . . but it was ok, because sometimes not dancing can be fun, depending on who you're doing it with. If that makes sense. 
• Also, the Girls' Support Staff girls and supervisors were all absolutely awesome. Just saying. If any of them are reading this: Hi! Virtual hug for you- I only wish it could be in person!
• This year was a lot busier than last year as well . . . particularly the final weekend. Oliver North was the speaker, which meant that both the new hotel (the one mostly used for conferences and such) and the old hotel (now mostly used as staff housing) were packed to the point that the speaker's own daughter was on the waiting list for a room, and in the dining hall- oh! Both Girls' and Boys' Support Staffs had to be on call for serving meals, and there was no time or space for us to eat dinner at the tables with the guests like usual. It was still good, though. And, miraculously, we got a block of a few hours on Saturday of simply free time, which helped a lot.
• I probably could've made this its own post, but . . . oh well. It's a bit late for that now, I think. 
•  After returning from White Sulphur Springs, we stopped at my grandpa's house for a few days, which was fun. Then we headed home for a week or so before the really big event of the month. That is . . .

• I'm at college. What even.
• We got here for orientation on the 19th, which was . . . slightly crazy, but not as bad as I feared. Everyone was very nice and welcoming, and my roommate and we got there early enough that I could get all my actual registration stuff done, plus go to all the talks I wanted to and get my room mostly organized that day. My family went to a local restaurant/ice cream place for dinner, and then we said goodbye . . . at which point the realness of college finally kicked in, and I had to go to bed quite quickly afterwards so that I didn't spend an hour or two either in shock or crying or both. 
• But the next day was ok. And so was the day after. And the week after. And now I've been at college for almost two weeks, and I'm doing pretty well. So that's good. I'm enjoying most of my classes- most of them are pretty awesome, one way or another. (So are my professors. Particularly my New Testament Literature professor who references things like LOTR and Narnia in class when he's trying to make a point Yep. The last few class periods, I've actually been disappointed when they ended. Though my philosophy professor is great too- very smart, slightly sarcastic, very deadpan, and a bit intimidating because he's so very good at forcing us to think and think again and yeah.)
• And I'm making quite a few new friends, I think, as well as meeting some who I'd known only online before now. (One of them is in my major, yay!) 
• Oh, and my roommate is awesome too. She's a bookworm and a fantasy/sci-fi fan and very smart and incredibly sweet and pretty much just an amazing person. We get along well- we're both introverts, so we're cool with giving each other space when we need it, but we have enough common interests and opinions that we can enjoy hanging out with each other.
• Also, the food is pretty good. I'm pretty sure my college is up there near the top on the list of Colleges With the Best Food. And if it's not, it should be. 
• Plus the campus is gorgeous. I haven't visited a ton of college campuses, but I, in my biased opinion, will say that mine is the prettiest.
• Basically, I'm enjoying college so far. And I'm writing all this so that in February, when it's freezing and snowing and I have a ton of homework, I can look back and say "Right. There's good things here, Sarah. Appreciate them. For five seconds before you go back to studying."
• Um. Yeah. That basically sums up life for me this month. Not that I really need more . . .

 Writing!

• So I'm still working on Fight Song. I've been keeping up with an average of about 150 words per day, which comes out to about 7.7K this month. Which, no, isn't a ton. But it's not bad either. And I swear that I am going to finish this novella eventually. Maybe Labor Day weekend I'll get super motivated and have a writing marathon day or something like that. Or I'll get way ahead in half my classes and so have more time for writing later. Or maybe a portal will open to Narnia and I'll go off there, have a great many adventures, and come back knowing exactly how to finish this book.
• Basically, yeah, I'm in a writing slump. Part of me wants to just go back to editing- but I also want to finish this story so I can share it because I really, really like it. In theory. It's just the actual writing that's getting me down right now.

Reading!

There is lots of it and it is glorious.

•  LOOK AT ALL THE BOOKS!
• So, yeah. I basically was trying to make up for July, when I read next to nothing. Plus I had a few 8-10-hour car trips and a week without any real responsibilities, which meant plenty of time for reading. And thus I managed to get in 20 whole books in the month of August! (Plus one week of July, which I mostly spent on The Shadow Rising. It counts.)
• So. Let's see. I usually start with highlights . . . which are really hard to pick. I've read a lot of really fun books this month, y'all. It's awesome. But it might mean that I just run through all the different books/series in some kind of non-preferential order. If that makes sense.
• The month started with finally finishing The Shadow Rising, which was definitely a highlight. The end of the book was . . . interesting, as were the revelations about the Aiel. My feelings on characters haven't changed much from what I said in July, with a few exceptions. Namely, I love Perrin and Faile, and I'm very interested to see how Perrin reacts once he realizes what he's actually done here. I think I'm slightly less annoyed with Egwene than I was in July, though I could be wrong. And I have been informed that she becomes pretty awesome in future books, so we'll see how that goes. And I rather do not like Aviendhra- while I suppose I might sulk if I were in her position, I don't think I'd do it quite so much- and I also predict that she and Rand will end up married. Which, as I mostly ship Rand with Elayne, poses a bit of a problem. Oh well.
• After finishing The Shadow Rising, I was ready for a long, long break from heavy fantasy, so I started in on the Fablehaven series, which was enthusiastically recommended and (in the case of the first two books) lent to me by a friend at WSS. I very much enjoyed the series- it wasn't amazing, but it was solid and had some pretty good storylines and characters. It also got surprisingly dark in bits . . . but it wasn't a bad type of dark, I don't think. I enjoyed the Beyonders series, another series by the same author that I read later in the month, much more; while the basic concept was slightly less unique than that of Fablehaven, I liked the characters and storyline more. 
• Another series recommended to me by a WSS friend was the Enchanted Forest Chronicles, the first of which was Dealing With Dragons. It's a sort of fairy-tale-parody series, though I'm not sure if "parody" is the right word- it's not so much that it retells fairy tales as it takes place in a world where the fairy tales are the normal and accepted thing and basically determine how the world works. On the whole, it's a highly amusing series, and if some things occasionally seem to work out a bit conveniently, well, fairy tales tend to be that way. The first two books in the series were my favorites, but the second two aren't bad either.
• Finally, a smattering of miscellaneous books: The Girl From Everywhere was delightful and time-travel-y and mysterious and I wouldn't mind sailing with Nyx and the crew for a while if that's all right? Enchanted Glass is a Diana Wynne Jones book which I've been meaning to read for a while, happened to see in the college library (there's an awesome section of classics, Middle Grade, and Young Adult fiction on the lower level; it's one of my favorite places on campus), and thought sounded like a good way to spend the second-to-last afternoon before classes started- and, happily, I was right. And, on the topic of books I happened to see in the college library: I also reread the second and third books in the Wilderking Trilogy, as well as the first two books in the Fairyland series- that's the series starting with The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making. It was slightly weird, rather Lewis-Carroll-ish, but on the whole a decent read. (The second book isn't pictured above, for the record, because I only read about half of it in August- the rest I read this morning while I was on the exercise bike.)
• Not pictured above is the book I'm currently reading for Western Literature: The Odyssey, which has been much more enjoyable and easier to get through than I expected. If I didn't have to answer questions about it every third section (not to mention do other schoolwork), I probably would have just read it straight through by now. If anyone's interested in reading a bit of Greek mythology, I definitely recommend it. (Do get the Robert Fitzgerald translation, though. I can't speak for any of the others.)

 Watching!

• Yeah. So. This is going to be a thing now. My roommate is much more into TV and movies than I am- which is to say, she's spent more time watching them than I have. And, conveniently, we have fairly similar tastes in movies. So, yeah, movie/TV nights are hopefully going to be a regular thing when we're not too busy.
• All this to say: if you can't guess from the image up top, I watched the first episode of Firefly, which is sort of a space-western thing! It's sort of odd and I don't quite have a good feel for the world yet, or how the characters got from where they are when the episode started (apparently in the middle of a battle for . . . somewhere? some planet? which didn't work out so well) to where they spent most of the episode (six years later, in space, smugglers, though I don't think they exactly want to be). But I like the characters and I like the plot and I'm not so confused that I can't keep up, and I hope that my roomie and I can find time to watch the next episode sometime soon. 
• Then we had another movie night Sunday and watched GalaxyQuest, which is sort of a Star Trek-spoof thing . . . with a surprisingly good plot once you get through the painfully embarrassing beginning and the rather campy everything. Essentially, it's about six actors who played characters in a Star Trek-type show years ago . . . but somehow this show got discovered by aliens across the galaxy who assumed it was real. And so when the aliens find themselves in a mess, they go looking for the actors, thinking they're heroes . . . you can probably guess the rest, but the basic plotline is of a type that makes me very happy.

September Plans!

• Obviously, now that school's started up, my life pretty much revolves around that. I expect that the amount of work will be increasing as the months go on, but I'm hoping to use Labor Day weekend to get a bit ahead in my work for some of the classes. (Since that'll mean reading a great deal of The Odyssey, as well as a historical fiction novel about the early church, I'm rather looking forward to that.) One nice thing about my schedule (that I didn't expect to be as nice as it is): I don't have any early classes, though a lot of my friends do. That means that I can often get a lot done before classes and then I'm mostly free in the evenings. (It also means that I don't have to lug more than the absolute minimum of textbooks across campus- very useful.) There are exceptions, yes, but I can almost always get the tiresome stuff out of the way early.
• And I still want to finish Fight Song. Somehow. I keep thinking that "Oh, there's just one or two scenes more before the climax," but no, there's more like three or four or five. But it needs to be done by November and that's that.
• And there will hopefully be a fair bit of reading-for-fun; since I try to get to classes early, I generally have five or ten minutes there where I don't have enough time to work on schoolwork but I do have time for a chapter or two. I'm going to finish the Fairyland series, and hopefully reread Reapers so I can finally get to Beyond the Gateway, and I keep telling my roommate that I'm going to read the Shatter Me series . . . Yeah. I won't be lacking reading material, despite having left most of my personal library at home.
• And I'm trying to find a church in the area, which is an interesting process. I know where I'm going this Sunday, more or less, but the Sunday after- no idea. (If you know where I am and have a suggestion of a good church, please leave it in the comments!)

How was your August? What are your plans for September? Please tell me in the comments!

Thanks for reading!

-Sarah (Leilani Sunblade)

July Doings!

Well, it's the end of another busy month, which means it's time for another Doings post. July really has just flown by, it seems-

What's that you say? July's not over yet? We still have over a week to go?

Well, I do actually know that. However, I won't be able to put up Doings at the usual time, for reasons which I'll explain later. For now, on with the post!

Writing!

•  As I mentioned last month, I'm once again participating in Camp NaNoWriMo. My project this month was Fight Song, a superhero novella. Synopsis for those interested:

Three years ago, she saw murder done.
Three years ago, everyone said she was crazy.
They still say it now. But she knows what she saw. She knows what she heard. And she will find the killer no one knows is a killer and bring him to justice, even if no one in the world believes her.
Because she's just one girl. But she has the power of her songs at her back- songs that can shape the world if used the right way- and she's not going to let anything stop her from completing her mission. 

• My goal was only 10K words, which is my lowest NaNo goal yet. I wasn't sure how much I'd be able to get through, and I'm glad I didn't try for more. Although I did hit 10K less than halfway through the month, I don't think I could've made it to 15K, let 20K, by this time. As it is, I won with about 12K words, and I should be able to finish the rest of the novel sometime in the next week or two.
• For those desiring snippets, the first two paragraphs of the novel:

The digital clock behind the receptionist's desk had just turned to twelve, and I was starting to wonder if I could get away with sleeping on duty when I heard it: the song of death.
The discordant notes jolted me into alertness, chasing all thoughts of sleep from my mind. I'd heard that song once before- when my family sat 'round my gramma's bed while she traveled through the pearly gates. It sounded worse now. Then it had bordered on being real music; this time it was . . . not. Not music, not simply noise, but something so harsh and wrong that listening was physically painful.

• And another piece of dialog that made me rather happy:

"All business, Songbird?" Jonathan turns his computer towards me. "Our villain committed the classic blunder-"
I can't resist. "He got involved in a land war in Asia?"
Jonathan rolls his eyes, though in an amused way. "No."
"Oh, so he went up against a Sicilian when death was on the line?"
"Good grief, Songbird, do you want the information or not?"

• Outside of Camp, I haven't done much other writing or editing, though I am hoping to re-edit at least one chapter of Destinies and Decisions before the month is out, and there's one or two stories (or story pieces) that I want to write for blogs if I can find time. We'll see how that works out.

 Reading!

• I have read approximately 50% of The Shadow Rising and that's all. In my defense, I've been busy, and when I've gotten free time, other things have taken priority. In general, my feelings about this book so far are about the same as my feelings about the first three books. I'm not a Rand fan, though he has improved. I like Perrin, though he's currently making a questionable choice or two and his refusal to admit that he's ta'veren is rather amusing. Faile needs to get off her high horse and stop driving Perrin crazy. Egwene is challenging Celeana Sardothien for the position of "Most Aggravating Female Character (Who Still Actually Does Something) Ever." Mat and Thom are both awesome and two of my favorite characters. Elayne is alternately annoying me with her Rand-crazyness and making me happy as she gets a chance to shine a bit away from Egwene's shadow. and Nynaeve continues to be fabulous and my other favorite character.
• I'm still hoping to finish The Shadow Rising by the end of July. I don't know if it'll happen or not, though.
• Oh, and I listened to The Penderwicks at Point Mouette with my family. I always enjoy the Penderwicks books, so that was fun. And it's sort of reading, right?

Life! 

•  Most of the month was occupied by my internship, which just ended today. I am very glad to not have to get up at 5:15 or 5:45 anymore unless I want to, let me tell you. I did enjoy the work, though, and I accomplished a lot in the relatively short time I was there. And today I had to give a briefing on what I'd done and learned during my internship, and I actually did pretty well, so that made me happy.
• We celebrated Independence Day weekend with a trip down to Lexington to visit a family friend who we haven't seen since we moved. I enjoyed the trip, and got a lot of writing done on it- 9+ hours in the car is pretty useful in that respect (even if a lot of that time was taken up by listening to the aforementioned audiobook).
• I crocheted my sister a dragon! The picture is above, for those interested. I'm really happy with how it turned out, especially as it's only my second crochet project. The hardest part of making him was actually sewing all the pieces together; making the parts was all single crochet and decreasing, which is pretty easy. I used the Hannah's Red Dragon pattern, though I used the wings from Tarragon the Gentle Dragon (which is a knit pattern that my sister has done more than a dozen times) because when I grabbed the dragon pattern, the author hadn't added wings. I want to make myself a similar dragon now, but I have to figure out what yarn to use, as I don't have enough red left.
• Last weekend, my church had a summer carnival/festival/mini-VBS thing. I ended up running the can-knock-down game. It was exhausting, but not as bad as I expected, and some of the kids were pretty cute. I think my game ended up being one of the most popular ones, partially because it was easy and partially because I tended to be generous with the tickets. 
• We also had a fair amount of family visiting this month. My grandpa came up the weekend of the 9th, which was fun. And then last weekend my aunt, uncle, and cousins visited, which was also nice since we haven't seen them in a while.
• We finally visited Fort Stanwix! Fort Stanwix is a recreation of a Revolutionary War fort- the only fort which never fell to the British during that war, and the site where the first red, white, and blue American flag was flown. I've wanted to go there ever since we moved here, since it looked pretty cool and like a great place to take pictures. As it turns out, it's even better than I expected. Like Williamsburg, it's a sort of "living history" site- but because it's a recreation rather than an original, you can actually go into the rooms, sit on the chairs, touch and pick up the stuff, and so on- which both made it more fun and better for photography. A few rooms were blocked off, yes, but I think that they may be on a rotation: some are open one day, some are open another, and some are open all the time. I also did my first escape room at Fort Stanwix, which was really fun. It wasn't quite what I was expecting- it was less like the escape room games I've played on the computer and more like a Nancy Drew or puzzle game- but I still enjoyed it.
• I bought a Kindle! I haven't actually used it because (A) I don't have a case for it yet, and (B) I've barely read anything all month. But it's still nice to have one that's all my own as opposed to technically being my mom's. (Not that she used it much at all- it was mostly my sister and I who read things on it.)

 August (and the last ten days of July) Plans!

•  As you may or may not have guessed and/or remember from my June Doings post, I'm taking another internet hiatus, starting on Friday, July 22. It should last for two weeks and a bit, so I'll be back in mid-August.
• However, I may be spotty during the rest of August; it's hard to say. I should be back to my regular posting schedule (or will have formulated a new schedule) by September, barring calamity. Just warning you.
• I really want to read more in August and the end of July than I have the rest of the month. No internet should help with that, though, as should not having an internship to keep me busy.
• I also want to finish writing Fight Song and then maybe work on some short fiction. And also fanfiction, if I can get my ideas sorted out. And once my hiatus ends, I'm going to get back to work editing Destinies and Decisions and whatever else I decide needs edited. 
• And there's something else happening in August, the nature of which some of you (or most of you) may be able to guess. And I think I should be slightly terrified about it, but I haven't had much time to be, so I'm just vaguely nervous and absentmindedly conscious that I really ought to have done more to prepare by now. So that's probably good- the not-being-terrified bit, I mean. Not the needing-to-prepare bit.

How's your July been? What plans do you have for August and the rest of the month? Please tell me in the comments!
Thanks for reading!
-Sarah (Leilani Sunblade) 

May Doings!

May is (almost) at an end, and summer has (unofficially) begun! Which is why this post is going up a few days early . . . but more on that later.

Writing!

• I finished Mechanical Heart fairly early in the month, as I expected to do. Overall, I’m fairly pleased with how the ending worked out. It’ll take a bit of editing, yes, but not as much as some stories I could name.
• A friend and I also did our own NaPoWriMo event during May. I’ve never before tried NaPoWriMo, which is a challenge to write a poem every day for a month. I quite enjoyed it, and it was a bit easier than I expected. Usually, I only write poetry when the mood takes me, so I thought thinking of something to write about every day might be a considerable challenge. But since I was actively seeking ideas, they came more readily, and overall I’m pleased with what I wrote.
• And a good thing too, because I basically did no other creative writing this month. (Well, unless you count roleplays.) Once I finished Mechanical Heart, I didn’t have another story to work on, and I didn’t have any strong enough ideas to start one. Granted, I probably should’ve been working on editing and rewrites . . . but I didn’t. And, to be honest, I don’t entirely regret that decision. I pushed myself pretty hard January through April; I can afford a month off.

Reading!

• Again, I had a really good reading month- perhaps not quite as good as April, but still excellent. All thirteen books I read are pictured above.
• The highlights of the month should be pretty easy to guess. I finally read Mistborn: Secret History, and well, wow. It’s hard to say anything at all without giving away spoilers, but basically, there were several questions answered, more questions raised, and I got to see one of my favorite characters again.
• The other highlights were The Raven King (final book in the Raven Cycle, which gives just enough closure to say “Ok, yeah, the series is over” but leaves enough loose threads that you’re certain the adventures aren’t done by any means), Lady’s Pursuit (not my favorite in the Knight and Rogue series, but a fitting end, and I kind of want to write a Knight and Rogue fanfic now), and The Dragon Reborn (my monthly visitation to the Wheel of Time series and a significant improvement over the other two- perhaps because there’s less of Rand being an idiot and trying to escape his fate and more of Mat being awesome).
• In addition, I finally reread The Phantom Menace as my little Star Wars Day celebration. I remember liking it more the first time around, but it was still enjoyable. And I finally read Stasis, an anthology by J. Tobias Buller (known on the Underground as Jake of the Sadaar), which was very enjoyable. It was also set largely in Africa, which was an interesting change from the usual.
• The main disappointment of the month was, surprisingly, The Princess Bride. It wasn’t bad, exactly, but for once I think the movie was better. You get all the best bits of humor, and if you miss a few plot pieces, I don’t think the story suffers for it. Inigo’s backstory was fun, but overall, I wasn’t impressed. (Of course, the three introductions to the story didn’t help matters, nor did the “excerpt” from Buttercup’s Baby.)

Life!

• Things I learned this month: how to take a halfway decent video; where to find free, legal stock photos and music; how to use Windows Movie Maker; how to not throw the computer containing Windows Movie Maker out a literal window when the program keeps vanishing bits and pieces of my audio and shutting down when I try to trim sections of video; and how to improvise a rolling camera stand out of a tripod and a rollerblade.
•  (For those curious: the stand works pretty well, though you have to be careful to keep the rollerblade moving in a straight line. And I was doing all this for a scholarship project. I probably won’t win, but it was good experience. And if I end up needing to do a lot of video work later in life, I’m definitely going to invest in a good post-production software. Windows Movie Maker may be simple to use, but it’s a real headache at times.)
• About halfway through the month, I got to meet Lalaithiel in person! She and her family were passing near my town, so we were able to meet up for breakfast at a little diner near my house. She’s just as awesome in real life as she is online, and I really enjoyed our meeting.
• My family went down to White Sulphur Springs for a retreat with our old Bible Study group. I got to see a lot of my friends and we played Mafia and Murder Murder (which is like Mafia, except not, and I swear we’re all very nice people). Because there was a wedding going on at the new hotel the weekend we were there, we stayed at the old hotel, which was a lot of fun. We had the whole place pretty much to ourselves, and I got to do some exploring in the bits I’d never seen before.
• Being in the old hotel did mean that we had to do our own cooking most meals, though . . . which was a task that got handed off to the teens because we didn’t have anything better to do. As most of the other teens in the study are better in the kitchen than I am, this worked out pretty well- they cooked or grilled or baked what needed to be cooked or grilled or baked; I cracked eggs and made lemonade and fetched things and helped set things out on tables; and everyone was happy.
•  I officially finished with school on the 20^th. For all practical purposes, I was done a week or so before then, but whatever. I’m done. Yay!
• I’m trying to do more walking now that we finally have nice weather on a regular basis. I didn’t exercise quite as much over the winter as I perhaps should have, so . . . yeah. I miss the walking paths in Virginia, but at least here I can walk to the library if I want to.

June Plans!

• Some of you may have noticed that every year, I take an internet hiatus around the beginning of June. Surprise, that’s happening again this year and starts on Monday. Thus why the post is going up early.
• Those of you who’ve noticed the yearly hiatus may also have a guess about what I’ll be doing during that hiatus. If you do, good for you. If not . . . well, I’ll tell you when I get back.
• Also after the hiatus, I’m starting an internship at the same place my dad works. I honestly didn’t expect to get said internship when I applied back in February, but there was a communications position open and I got it. I’m excited, but mostly I’m scared . . . Prayers would be appreciated.
•  On the writing front, I don’t plan on doing a ton, but I am joining in Go Teen Writers’ 100-4-100 Challenge. I’m not 100% certain what I’ll be doing for it, but I’ve been informed that rewriting and short stories both qualify. So I may use it to get back into reworking Destinies and Decisions, since the next bit I need to work on is actual rewriting as opposed to just editing. Or I may end up writing short stories and fanfiction until July.
• With all that, I probably wouldn’t do a ton of reading . . . but there are some books I’m looking forward to, as I mentioned in a recent post. Besides that, I want to read Fahrenheit 451, a recommendation from my former youth leader, as well as the next Wheel of Time book and some of the pile of Star Wars Expanded Universe books a friend supplied to me. So, yes, I’ll have plenty to keep me busy.

How’s your month been? What plans do you have for June? Please tell me in the comments!
Thanks for reading!

-Sarah (Leilani Sunblade)  

Two Weeks in Rivendell: WSS Support Staff

Of all the amazing locations in fantasy books, Rivendell has always been one of those I've most wished to visit. Its peaceful beauty and the respite it offers from the cares of normal life draw me to it, making me wish the valley of Imladris were real.

I never realized that it- or somewhere very like it- is, and not only that, but I've visited there a half-dozen times.

White Sulpher Springs, the eastern conference center for Officer's Christian Fellowship, is not home to elven lords, nor is it located near the Misty Mountains (though it is found in the Allegheny Mountains, which get pretty foggy in the mornings). But the things that really make me want to visit Rivendell are found there all the same. It's a beautiful place, particularly in the early mornings, when the air is still cool (even in August), the sky is just waking up, and there's still mist over the forest-covered mountains. Nearly every morning, I'd do my devotions in a rocking chair on the back porch and stare out at the sky, the hills, and the gravel road that winds past pastures and into the trees. It's peaceful, a place apart from the troubles of everyday. There's delicious food, singing at every meal and throughout the day, good company, and good discussions.

And, for me, it's Rivendell in another way: a Last Homely House to welcome me before I bid farewell to Virginia and set off for whatever adventures New York has to offer. And as Rivendell provided rest for Frodo and  Bilbo and a place for them to prepare for the rest of their adventure, so White Sulpher Springs gave the same to me.

I wasn't at White Sulpher Springs to relax- not by a long shot. I was staying there as part of Support Staff, a team of sixteen highschoolers (eight guys, eight girls) who work around the hotel and help keep it running. The guys work outside, chopping wood and mowing lawns and such. The girls take care of cleaning and meal prep; in the two weeks I was there, I vacuumed halls and stairs, dusted almost every room at least once, washed far too many windows, cleaned bathrooms (a less unpleasant job than it sounds), prepared and served drinks, set tables, washed silverware (not a task for the squeemish- the water gets very greasy very fast), and more. It was hard work- but not as tedious as I feared. 

And once our chores were done- and most days, that happened by noon, or perhaps two at the latest, excluding dinner prep- we were free to do as we pleased. There were events most days which we had to help with, true: International Night on Monday (I got to wear a kilt!), ice cream social at the old hotel on Tuesday, Western Night on Wednesday (at which I learned how to square dance and do the Virginia Reel, both of which are more fun than I expected), a picnic and games on Thursday, new guests on Friday, and afternoon tea on Sunday. But the events are fun, and staff is not only allowed but strongly encouraged to enjoy them- a good thing, since we occasionally outnumbered the guests.

And almost every night, after dinner and worship music and before the speaker for the retreat started talking, there was Family Hour, a sort of talent show for guests and staff alike to use their gifts to praise God. I read The Mercy Song one night; many people sang or played some instrument. One Support Staff girl, Anna, who's fluent in sign language, signed to a new song almost every night. Then, on Monday nights, after the speaker's message was over, we had Skit Night, a chance for all sorts of hilarious. On one of these, I got to read The Pen and the Sword- and it was amazing. I've never been confident speaking in front of people, but that evening, well- I was already wearing a kilt, and I love my poem, and I just decided to go full-on bard, being as dramatic as possible with my introduction and poem, and I owned it.

And when there were no events and no chores, I had books to read or poetry to write- or, if I wanted, friends to hang out with. The Support Staff girls did more than support the hotel; we supported each other. I can't even begin to name all the times when I or another girl was struggling with something and one or more of the others stepped in to encourage whoever it was. The encouragement took many forms: a helping hand with chores when someone was tired or overwhelmed, a listening ear when someone needed to talk, hugs and strengthening words and comfort food on the second Wednesday when square dancing went sour for two of us (one of whom was me- Accidental Exile syndrome kicked in, for the only time in those weeks). Sometimes, the person doing the encouraging didn't even know how big of an impact they'd made. But always, someone was there when we needed them.

Oh, and on the note of awesome people: I got to meet an online friend of mine, Jenna, since she was Assistant Supervisor for the Girls' Staff. She's even more awesome in real life than online: funny and kind and patient and creative. The first International Night, she wore a Laketown costume she'd made for when she went to see one of the Hobbit movies, and one afternoon, we got to chat about life and books and just random stuff, and it was lovely.

But White Sulpher Springs, like Rivendell, is more than a place of peace and enjoyment. It's a stronghold against the dark, and for me, as I mentioned before, a place of preparation for the journey ahead. The first was evident in devotions every morning, in worship songs in the evenings and at every meal, in frequent prayer, and in so many other things. The latter? Part of that preparation was indeed all the things I mentioned before, the chance for peace and relaxation before insanity hits. Another part was the encouragement from others who've been where I am. But the biggest part was the lessons I learned, one in particular: choosing joy, and what that looks like.

Part of the lesson came indeed from the devotions and formal lessons. But most of it came, actually, from the work I had to do. I, being an average teen, don't particularly enjoy housework. Having come there expecting to work made it a little easier, but there were still days when I just didn't want to do anything. When I had to choose joy or choose to sulk. Before, I'd always had this idea- even though I knew better- that choosing joy meant being happy about what's going on, or at least being happy period. But it's not that. Joy isn't being happy about work or hardship. It's singing anyway. 

See, I usually have my iPod when I work at home. But electronics aren't allowed for WSS Support Staff. So if I wanted music, I had to sing it myself. On good days, I did, so long as no one was around to object- I had a few songs on repeat for most of the two weeks: some Andrew Peterson, one or two Celtic songs, some Owl City. But on bad days, one day in particular when I was tired and my whole body ached and I just wanted to sit down and moan, singing was hard. 

But I did it anyway. And, funny thing, when you're singing- particularly when you're singing Andrew Peterson's "Nothing to Say", it's hard to be miserable. You can still be tired, you can still be sore, but sadness? That's hard to hold onto because your focus goes elsewhere.

I'm no longer at White Sulpher Springs; I'm at my house, in the midst of packing so we can say final goodbyes and leave for our new home. My personal life is currently contained in thirty-three boxes, two backpacks, and a suitcase. At the end of the week, I have two goodbye parties- one hosted by my youth group, the other by my Bible study. And after that- I'm gone, heading into the Misty Mountains (or New York, however you want to look at it) and hoping I don't run into any orcs or goblins or freak blizzards.

But no matter what happens, I'm going to keep singing.