Well, we're coming up on the close of week three and I'm a few hundred words away from breaking the 10 K mark. That'll put me at 1/5th of where I want to be by the end of the month. Having the flu over the last week and a half didn't help things any. Having a toddler who has decided that when Momma sits down to write means it's time to demand she watches youtube videos with him hasn't exactly helped things either. I'm mostly of the way finished with the first chapter (I think). I just have a scene that I really don't want to write at the moment because it's going to be an extremely graphic and violent rape scene.

I didn't want that to happen but somehow the story developed into a much darker thing then I thought it was going to be at first. I have a feeling this incarnation of the story is going to be the final one and going to show just how horrible the main villan is.

Life hasn't been cooperating with this year's NaNoWriMo attempt so far. Even now, my head hurts horribly because I've been on the edge of a migraine since about 4 am this morning. I was hoping that the aura symptoms would subside but it's not happening. Instead, I'm beginning to feel some pain and the light sensitivity is starting to kick in. I'm getting kinda fustrated, but what I do have done is looking good.

I must say, I'm please that the villian has been showing signs of true monstrosity this time. Yes, I have spelling errors right now. I'm also having a hard time thinking at the moment. Here's hoping that a combination of coffee and tylenol works because if it doesn't then it's nap time and i won't get more writing done today. :(

Currently, I'm reading a version of the Adventures of Robin Hood with my eldest child. Sure, he's only two, but it's something that helps him settle down before nap time and I enjoy the story. I think we're going to start over again at the beginning, but I'm not sure. We had gotten up to the wedding of Alan-A-Dale before the move back in May. It's a bit of a debate for me if we're going to start over again or not. I may just keep going and we'll start on a different story book when we finish. I'll post more about it a little later. I'm rather out of the habit of posting in here and I need to fix that. I think posting about this book I'm reading with my son is going to be the beginning point of fixing that particular issue.

I also need to find my other reading journal. :P

Hi there!

I haven't updated in forever. I apologize for that. Life has happened to me on a consistent basis over the last several weeks (months). But hey, who's counting, right??

I'm soon to be working on NaNoWriMo. Nervous and excited for it this year. I have been doing some pre-writing for it this year. It is my hope to finally finish the first book in a series that I've been working on. It's been a ... long and painful process because each time I think I've gotten it done I look at the story and realize that I forgot some element. So, this time I have decided to sit down and start with an outline rather then attempting to write the thing out in a sitting. Hopefully this will help. I don't think referencing past versions counts as cheating but rather as research. This is because with each change, the story changes radically.  This time, however, I'm going to call the story done after I get to the end of the month and then write out the outline for the next book.

It's my hope to just to finally get it all down on paper. I determined it was going to turn into a series when I sat down and looked at the story I had been trying to tell in just one book over the last decade and a half. I realized that the story was too large to be done in one book or even three. It is going to be approximately 15 books to tell the story. I've got my work cut out for me, to say the least. I'm planning on posting 'status reports' on how this is going once a week here on my LJ. 

It is my sincere hope to be posting book reviews and commentary again in the near future.

On the 29th of July, my second child was born. I've been too sleep deprived/busy/disorganized to read or write much of anything for the last little while. Look for a post from me in about a week. We're beginning to settle down into a schedule around here.

I've set up a Facebook account under one of my nom de plumes. I have a feeling this is just asking for trouble. :p

As stolen from wiccanlilly :


Ask me 6 questions. Any six, no matter how personal, private or random, I have to answer them honestly. Then in turn, you have to post this message in your own journal.

I don't really know why I'm posting it here, but teething is making things... hellish over the last few days. I want to just go and hide or something until this is done. :P

That said, we're making progress unpacking and stuff. I'm looking forward to having everything settled here. In the meantime, I'm trying to figure out what I can take care of despite the fact that I'm pregnant and not sleeping well. Also, desperately hoping that Doug will stop screaming long enough to sleep. Last night, he didn't get to sleep until 11 pm because he was screaming most of the night. I love him dearly, but I refuse to sit there and hold him as he sleeps all night or for the whole afternoon. :P

Somebody, please find my sanity and mail it back to me.  I think I'm going to need it in a little while.

I'm not sure if I have reviewed these yet, but I don't think I have. I've recently read three books from an excellent author named Christopher Moore. If you have the opportunity to read these, do so. They're excellently written and Moore's witty sense of humor shines right out of each page. Occasionally there are some unexpected moments of depth in these books.

• Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff
• Practical Demon Keeping
• Coyote Blue

Aside from those three, I read just last night a book that I'm still in the midst of considering my opinion of it. It is titled The Hour I First Believed and is written by Wally Lamb. I don't know why, but this author's name sounds very familiar. I'm going to have to read this particular book again, as I found it surprisingly emotional and subtle.

Lastly, I have read an exceptionally amusing pulp work based in the mystery genre titled Brimstone. I forget who the author was, but this was such an... amusing little book that I am going to post about it even though it really is nothing but fluff. I'm odd, but the idea of a murderer using a hoax of Satan claiming the soul of a man as a cover for their crime just amuses me. I'm not entirely sure why, but I found it more then a little laughable.

A side note unrelated to books, Pandora is simply amazing!

     First off, I have to apologize to gryvon , because I've only recently found your books. PROTIP: Never have family help you move! Especially when they repack EVERY THING! Thank the gods that Mom didn't decide to repack anything from the bedroom. I wouldn't want to listen to her comments about the adult toys. Secondly, I need to apologize to the readers of this little journal of mine. I am forced to move away from what has become my new standard format for a more general post about these books. While I've found the books, they're currently in a spot that my pregnant body can't get to safely. Between the boxes on the floor and having a huge baby-belly, it's just not happening right now. I miss my feet.

     Magician: Apprentice and Magician: Master are both excellent books, if you're looking for something that is high fantasy and angled for the young adult reader. These two books are actually two volumes of the same book. A quick look at Wikipedia gives a summary of the plot and links to the blurbs written about the major characters, so I'll spare you my summary of it. The thing I really enjoyed about Magician was the development of the character of Pug. Of all the books in the Riftwar Saga, I truly believe this is the best because the characters of Pug and Tomas are amazingly vibrant.
   
     I recognize some of my feeling here is due to the warm rush of nostalgia that came over me as I sat reading it. The other reason is by virtue of the fact that in the character of Pug (and to a lesser degree Tomas) a young reader can find a great deal in common. The development of the character of Pug and how he responds to the challenges before him are easy for a youthful reader to identify with. The humility, courage, and integrity that the character of Pug displays as he develops also sets a positive example for the young reader to realize that the adage about 'Nice guys finish last' is not always true. On the whole, I truly believe that this book is the best of the trilogy.

     Silverthorn is a very good book but I believe it is the weakest of the trilogy. The plot is well constructed however, I admit that I was disappointed by the fact that the main characters of this particular part of the trilogy lacked the depth of the main characters of the first book. Again, a quick glance at Wikipedia, we can find the summary of the plot. I suspect that if Feist had decided to open this book of the series into two volumes and allowed himself the time, the characters would have taken on a greater depth. On the whole, Silverthorn felt to be a very rushed work and I found it dissatisfying to read.

     A Darkness at Sethanon was almost as strong of a presentation from Feist as Magician. While it didn't have quite the same degree of introspection and character exploration as can be found in Magician, I think that this book did a better job of moving the plot forward in a fashion that did not feel rushed, like it did in Silverthorn. I particularly enjoyied how the rapid sequences of events in the plot line didn't leave the reader in the position of wondering if they missed some point of interaction, which frequently seemed to happen in Silverthorn. Again, Wikipedia provides an adequate summary of the plot for you to read, so I will not bore you with it.

I'm moving in a few weeks so the updates that I promised... Yeah, they'll be late again. Sorry about that.

To help make up for this, I'd like to share a little bit of wonderful humor from the interwebz.

Click here:

http://xkcd.com/585/

It will make you smile, I'm sure. :)

Hi, I just had to get this off my chest. I'm sick of the news about how we need to be afraid of the swine flu.

Look, when the WHO says that there is 114 cases confirmed right now, I'm not going to start worrying. It's 114 people out of how many on this planet? I'm not saying that we shouldn't be taking the practical measures to avoid getting sick. We should be washing our hands, avoiding dealings with the obviously ill, and staying home to get well when we get sick anyways!

If you want me to worry, let's start making those numbers a lot higher. Do a search on the 1918 influenza pandemic if you want to see what a real pandemic looks like.

...

Oh, I've got one more gripe to throw out there for y'all to consider.

The Secretary of Homeland Security is not qualified to discuss what we're going to do about a possible epidemic or pandemic.

Yeah, you read that right. They're not qualified. When I start to see the Director of the Center for Disease Control sweating bullets and looking really anxious, I'll consider trusting some of what the talking heads are saying. Because, guess what, that's the person who's got the authority and qualifications to be talking about this mythical pandemic.

What really bothers me is the fact that a large number of the population of the USA is probably going to think 'OMG! I'm going to DIE if I get sick now! It'll be SWINE FLU!' or something else foolish like that. Why? Because there is a large percentage of the population that swallows the propaganda and expects the almighty government to take care of us all.

You know, as heartless and horrible as this might sound, maybe it'd be a good thing they caught this damn mythical epidemic and survived it. Because it would teach them that government is not their friend and that the media does not know all. Who knows, maybe we'd see a sudden resurgance in a bit of good old fashioned American independence and self-sufficency!

EDIT:  Well, I'm now inclined to be concerned. The number of cases in the US appears to have doubled in the span of 1 day. Liz, I think I'm forced to conceed the point but I'm still ticked off with the drama whores in the media.

     Because I feel the need to comment on the series before I talk about each book individually, I'm doing so in a separate post. I may be doing this in the future when I discuss books that are part of a series. Keep your eyes out for future commentary in this fashion. I'll be breaking from my usual discussion of the construction of the books and the quality of the writing as well. This post is all about the content.

     I don't know who else out there has read the work of Raymond E. Feist but I'm fairly sure that you all have your own feelings on the matter. For my part, my feelings are nostalgia because this was part of the 'pulp fantasy fiction' market that I cut my teeth on in junior high school. I have to say, when I discovered that the covers of the books that gryvon loaned to me looked exactly like what I remembered, I was tickled pink. Especially the cover for Magician: Apprentice. While the professional book critics are inclined to say that Feist's Riftwar Saga invites comparison with Tolkien's work, I'm not as fully inclined to agree. I, however, am a Tolkein-phile and therefore biased. It is, however, an excellent read and clips along at a wonderful pace.

     I, in my snobbish ways, would say that this series is focused upon the young adult market. As a kid in junior high and high school, I was reading college level material with minor difficulties so I don't know if this is just a difference based in my personal experience.  Feist's Riftwar Saga is wonderfully easy to read and very well organized. Personally, I really enjoyed it and found it to be a welcome break from the various books about herbalism, philosophy, and related research material that I've been working my way thru for a manuscript I'm working on. My husband, on the other hand, felt that the story was not strong enough and that the plot didn't have enough twists and turns to keep him interested. To each, his own - as the expression goes.

     The thing I enjoyed the most about the Riftwar Saga was how the central characters were very well developed and even the minor characters were made to be interesting. I also highly enjoyed the rich descriptions of the setting. Between the very realistic social interplay between the characters and the very well described scene where the events of the story unfolded, it made it quite easy for me to visualize the story. Amusingly, however, this is one of the things that my husband complained about. As he said, "The first half of the first chapter could probably have been summed up in three pages!" I feel that is inviting over simplification of the plot, but he is entitled to his opinion. (And yet the man reads and enjoys the work of Stephen Brust?)

     I will try to address each book soon, as I will be returning them to gryvon later this week. I apologize it has taken me so long to post. My life has been more then a little crazy of late.

I've got to thank gryvon for loaning me the Riftwar Saga from Raymond Feist. I'll be posting commentary about the books soon.

Aside from this, I'm going to start posting book reviews up on Triond and Helium. They'll be shorter then what I do here, but don't be surprised to see some of the same titles going up there and here.

* Edited to remove duplicate post. *

Also, I've changed my layout here. I think I like it. :) Too bad I didn't find one for quilting or something. I suppose I'll keep my eyes open. :)

I'm not sure how many folks read this. But here's a thought for y'all who do.

I'm thinking it'd be kinda cool to have a book club I'm apart of. Let's start one with an LJ community. What do you think? Then we don't need to actually meet somewhere and we can just have a different book we talk about a month.

What do y'all think??

:)

So, I've decided to finish the novel I started for NaNoWriMo last year. While I hated the way it was unfolding (because I generally despise modernist fiction and post-modernist fiction) I can't help but admit I want to see how it ends. I'm also vaguely curious if I could actually get this thing published by a publishing house. It's something that I have no emotional investment in. I think that makes it a safe thing to throw at that proverbial wall and see if it sticks.

I'll be making a note about this as work proceeds. I'll also slap up here a rough synopsis of it.

Below my bit of ranting here is the lolcat for your viewing pleasure. I just love those things. They give me a giggle and ... well... I'm a cat person. Since I can't have one myself, I look at these ones. :)

Ok, now for the ranting.

If you have taken the time to sit down with a newspaper, you will find that there's more filler then articles. What do I mean by filler? Well, when you purchase the newspaper, what do you get? Almost two full inches worth of advertisements and a few pages of articles. The Sunday edition is especially bad. I know that at the age of 30, I can't really get into the whole 'in the good old days' rant but I am fairly sure that when I was a kid the newspaper wasn't that full of advertisements.

When I sit down and open up the paper, I don't want to look at 40 billion different ads telling me where to go spend the money I don't have right now. I want to read articles that are well written and informative. A section of human interest articles is fine by me, but don't have it take up 85 % of the paper. Fortunately, I'm finding that is not the case right now. Unfortunately, the human interest articles are better written then the informative ones. (That just irks me.)

I wish I could say that the print news media was better then the television but I can't. While the television news media is over run with human interest pieces on the local basis, the flaws of the informative journalism that are present there are also present in the print news media. I've got to admit, I have a rather huge pet peeve that they keep hitting every day and it has me half tempted to just stop watching the news all together. I'm doing my best to swallow this irritation but it's rather like having a rash of poison ivy that just is in the worst spot to have it ever and doing your best to ignore it with out any treatment for it. I'm fairly sure that I'm not the only one here who feels that if we wanted the reporter's opinion about the news that we'd look for it in an editorial section.

It may not be quite as heavy handed as it is in the television news but it is present in the print version and it annoys me to no end. I don't want the reporter's opinion when I read an article about the events occurring in Darfur for example. I want the facts about the situation and to be allowed to make up my own mind about it. The same is true with domestic news be it local or national. Quite frankly, the degree of hubris that is taken by the journalist community with respect to formulating opinion and digesting the information that is presented is disgusting.

I realized rather suddenly why I did so terribly in the writing for mass media class I took several years ago at college. I refused to insert my own opinion into the peices that we were writing and I refused to influence the reader's opinion to one direction or the other in developing the work. This lead to a very fustrated instructor who saw that I clearly had talent as a writer and a very fustrated student (myself) who felt that a great deal of the course was bullshit. My opinions on this haven't changed over the years. If anything, they've become strengthened.

I made the mistake of watching 60 Minutes on Sunday. I say mistake because the interview with Captian Sullenberger angered me. It wasn't that he carried himself poorly or anything else like that. And nothing he said angered me. As a matter of fact, I was quite pleased with his reaction to the interview questions and the general tone that Katie Couric was attempting to present. No, what angered and disgusted me was the sheer amount of effort that Ms. Couric put into attempting to make the interview more dramatic.

She wanted to rob this man of his dignity and make him break down on camera. She asked deliberately leading questions in an attempt to get him to reveal very personal things that Capt. Sullenberger didn't want to, and he resisted this line of questioning admirably. Now, I understand that 60 Minutes is part of this whole field of 'infotainment' and it's a news magazine. To quote Rhett Butler's line from the movie version of Gone with the Wind, "Quite frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn."

As a journalist, Ms. Couric has a responsiblity to her audience to present the information in an unbiased fashion. She failed in this responsibility and did so blatantly. It digusted me to see it. It also left me rather horrified by her demeaning treatment of Capt. Sullenberger. Who is she to tell him how to feel about the situation? That is precisely what those leading questions do. They're baised and based in an assumption that he fit a specific sterotype. It is a fine example of just how journalistic integrity has gone down the toilet over the last 30 years, at least.

Let's put aside the fiasco that resulted in the old warhorse of Dan Rather losing his job. At the root of it, journalism is no longer about presenting the facts to the public and allowing them to decide how they feel about them or what they think. Journalism has become focused now upon propaganda and perpetuating certian public impressions. I am disgusted by the entire business and I am glad that I'm not formally apart of it.

On CNN's website, I discovered the news. John Updike died today. He wrote a great many novels that examined the daily life of suburban America. In an interview from 2000, which I literally just saw a clip of 5 min ago on the evening news here on my television, Updike stated that he drew inspiration from his hometown and events he witnessed in his life. Apparently, he also set the goal of writing a book every year. Deceased at the age of 76, he wrote approximately 50 books.

He was most famous for his Rabbit series. I, being the horrid wretch I am, have not actually read it. I think I will read at least the first in the series, Rabbit, Run. I highly enjoyed the movie version of his book The Witches of Eastwick. It has been a rather intense point of fustration for me that I haven't been able to locate a copy so that I can read it. I'm going to try again, however, because I suspect that the interlibrary loan system may actually prove helpful in finding it this time.

The poetry of Updike, I am somewhat familiar with. I was first introduced to it in my freshman English Lit. class. It was his poem Penumbrae. I'm closing this post by quoting it. I've linked back to Poetry.com, where I found it.

This one made me smile. :D


:D

*This* should be entertaining. Now I need to locate a new book to read so this thing doesn't get taken over by memes and random interwebz stuff.