Well folks. I’ve done it. I am here. I have officially moved cross-country from Houston to DC. The drive was long but relatively painless, except for the fact that I started feeling under the weather in the last couple days of packing and by the time I reached Virginia I had a full-blown cold. It’s still kicking my ass several days later. My mother and I did the drive together, for which I am very grateful. And I visited the George Washington campus for the first time on Tuesday, with my mom, my dad, and even my stepmother tagging along to follow me around while I gaped at everything lol. I’ve been on a decent number of college campuses by now, but this one is very impressive. And a bit intimidating, as it is right in the middle of DC and just a few blocks away from the White House!
My mother went home yesterday (I feel bad that she had to drive back by herself). And I am currently sitting on campus awaiting orientation. More specifically, I’m sitting in the Flagg building, which was built in the 1890s (I believe?) and houses the Corcoran School of Art and Design. I’m still a little flabbergasted that I’ll be taking courses in this very beautiful old building!
And then classes officially begin next Monday. Unsurprisingly, I am both excited and nervous. Very nervous. People who know me well know that I am an anxious person by nature, so nervous is my default mode. But still. I’ve also chugged like half a bottle of Dayquil (slight exaggeration) to make it through orientation today. Hopefully, I’ll be able to properly rest and recover over the weekend so I’m not a zombie during my first class on Monday.
I’m still very much in a state of confusion right now, with most of my stuff in boxes and an unsettled routine and all that. But once I’ve gotten a handle on the first week or so of the semester and started settling in, I’ll make an effort to get a book review or two written and posted. Lord knows I’ve read enough in the last few weeks. It’s just finding the time to sit down and write about any of it is even more challenging than usual right now.
Hello all! It’s been quite a long time since I touched this site or posting anything new to the blog. I have no illusions that I will be able to start actively updating the blog on a regular basis again, though I keep telling myself I should, and want to. That said, I felt it was time to update a few things and make an effort to at least drop a line from time to time. As such, please indulge me while I share some news of my life.
First, I am about to embark on a new adventure. I have been accepted to the Master’s Program in Museum Studies at George Washington University beginning in Fall 2025. I will be moving from my home in Texas, where I have lived now for nearly 17 years, to Washington, D.C. to attend graduate school full-time. Again. I am both excited and nervous to be returning to grad school and an academic environment nearly 7 years after I left my PhD program and adjunct teaching position to work in the private sector. Ok, terrified. The word is ‘terrified,’ but it’s a good kind of terrified. A “getting out of my comfort zone”/”going on an adventure” kind of terrified. It is my fervent hope that this new degree path will lead to work in the museum field, though where specifically I will end up is anyone’s guess.
Due in part to this new adventure, I have made the difficult decision to start phasing out my freelance editing services, with plans to officially close shop at the end of August. This is not an easy decision, but a necessary one. In addition to returning to school, this decision is influenced by the rise AI and decline meaningful work. While I had some mild success working with self-publishing authors, and certainly enjoyed what I do, in the last year the work has dried up primarily due to the rise of AI options. I am against all forms of generative AI in writing, editing, or artwork, etc, and not only because of the threat to my own work. I firmly believe use of AI is unethical. It is theft of others’ art and intellectual property. And the quality is sub-par anyway. On top of that, it is enormously damaging to the environment.
That said, I can’t control if other writers choose to use AI for their writing or editing needs. It is certainly much cheaper (though you get what you pay for). I and many other freelance editors have seen a drastic drop of available work and a concurrent increase in potential clients who willfully misunderstand what kind of work editors do and what a fair price is for their services. In any case, I’m waving the white flag. I will continue taking on new projects through the end of the summer, with completion dates no later than end of August or early September. After that, I will be closing shop.
My third bit of news is that, in addition to my freelance work and preparing to return to grad school, I also completed revisions of the novel I’ve had in progress for some time, The Supernaturalists. I am now officially querying with agents in hopes of traditional publication. It’s taken me such a long time to get to this point and I am hopeful that I will be able to pursue publication while working on my new degree. (Fingers crossed). I am already hard at work writing the sequel, and I’m about halfway through the first draft. I hope to have a finished draft by the end of the summer, before the Fall semester starts. I also have a couple short stories out on sub with literary magazines and will share news if/when either of them are picked up for publication.
THE SUPERNATURALISTS: In 1920s Cleveland, empath Thomas wants to be left alone with the ghosts of WW1. Former spy Sebastian needs to find the Wall Street bomber. When mobsters & magical terrorists throw them together, they’ll need to find the line between trust and attraction if they want to survive.
Of course, my life has been strange and busy the last couple years and there is much more I could (and may later) talk about both good and bad. But these are the big life developments I wished to share for now. While I know myself well enough to realize I will not be able to keep up any kind of regular blogging schedule, I currently plan to post at least a couple things in the new future. First and foremost, I wanted to share some of the best things I read in 2024 and the first half of 2025. My main goal has always been to talk about books, so I want to do that! From there, we’ll see how things go!
Hello all! If you take a look around, you’ll notice that I have been tinkering with the site a bit! I have a new static landing page, and I have added other pages as well. Don’t worry! The blog is still running and will be easy enough to find under the “Blog” tab. And if you subscribe by email you’ll be sent directly to the new post anyway, without having to navigate anywhere.
However, I’d love it if you folks took a look around when you have a chance. As mentioned in my previous post, I have gone ahead and added an information page specifically for freelance editing, for which I am now open. Even if you yourselves are not in need of such services, I would greatly appreciate if you could share the word with any writer-type friends who might be!
In addition, as you may see in the “Featured” column on the Home page, in the coming days/weeks I will be adding a separate page/tab for my personal writings (not blog posts or book reviews, but poetry, snippets of fiction, and creative nonfiction kinds of things). AND I will be linking to a new little side project shop I am in the process of putting together on Etsy.
In the meantime, you can definitely still expect a full book review post from me this upcoming Friday!
(Also, I’m not entirely happy with the header image still, so that will likely continue to change for awhile.)
Hello folks! I just have a few updates this week. We have officially hit December and the holiday season, and there are only 5 Fridays left in the year (including today). I know! I’m shocked and horrified by this as well. I hope everyone is having fun preparing for their various holiday-season traditions (there are so many holidays in so many religions and cultures around the world this time of year, it’s pretty amazing!) And I hope that the concurrent issues of shopping, travel, dealing with family, etc don’t stress anyone out too badly (they always stress me out plenty).
As we are nearing the end of the year, and all that entails, I wanted to give you heads up that weekly posts will probably be a bit spotty this month. I have one book review in draft right now, that I will probably post next week. And I am planning to do a “My Favorite Reads of the Year” list in time for the New Year. That might be it from me for the month. I suspect most people aren’t going to mind too much; they have other things to worry about besides reading my blog posts, lol. But I apologize for the slow-down anyway.
In other news, I am considering starting to take on freelance editing work – this kind of editing (developmental and copy/line-editing) is usually for folks who are preparing to indie or self-publish, but can be useful even for those planning to submit manuscripts to agents/editors in traditional publishing. I have done some editing work in the past, but it has always been for friends, or friends of friends, for small amounts of money or pro bono. I have recently picked up a couple new potential clients (we’re still hammering out confirmations) based on word-of-mouth, and it has made me think I might like to try making it more official. I might post the information as a page here, or possibly make a full website landing page for everything. But in any case, if this is something anyone out there has been looking into for a project, feel free to contact me!
I am also thinking about some things I would like to do for the blog starting in the new year.
The blog I ran in the height of the blog-popularity from 2011-2015 or so was not huge — I didn’t have thousands of readers or anything — but it did fairly well. It had around 500 subscribers, lots of comments, averaged a couple thousand hits a week, etc. This new one doesn’t get a fraction of that engagement. I know the blogging heyday is past. I can’t expect anything like that again, but it’s still disheartening. I keep wondering if writing this blog is like screaming into a void that no one else hears or cares about, and I would be better off just redirecting this writing time/energy back toward my own personal writing. On the other hand, I do enjoy writing these little book reviews, and my main goal originally was to help support and spread the word about books/authors that I really love. I’m just not sure I’m even doing that if NO ONE reads these (except for DirtyBuddha, the only reader who consistently looks at/likes every post! Shout out to you! Thanks!)
On top of all that, I’ve had ideas for things I wanted to write/talk about that I haven’t yet because, as few readers I have now, I fear that people will care even less about these other things. Most of them are still book-related (though not all), but they aren’t book reviews and if that’s what most of my readers (few as they are) are here for it would feel like a waste of time to even sit down to type these other ideas out. The problem stems, I think, from the fact that I have advanced degrees in literature but I stopped teaching and I feel like I have all this information and all these niche interests floating around my head with no useful outlet.
I talked to my best friend about that a bit, and she gave me some good advice that kind of boiled down to: don’t worry about what others think. On one level, that’s kind of the point of a blog, to share content that you think/hope others will engage with, so you kind of have to care. On another level, though, she’s right. If the blog is for me, for talking about things I’m interested in (even if it’s aimed at an empty void), then does it really matter? And, she said, maybe you’ll write a post that will show up on someone’s google search someday, for someone with the same niche interests who never thought anyone else had ever written about the topic before, and even if that’s the only reader you ever get for that post, won’t it be nice to be there for the one person who really wanted to read it?
It’s a nice thought. Though it still begs the question of how much time and energy I should pour into this blog, and how much of that time is a waste that should be aimed at things that will have more long-term benefits (like finishing one of my damn novels).
In any case, it’s something I’ve been thinking about. Some of the things I’ve been thinking about writing about include an old course syllabus idea I had for (anti)war novels, and one for planetary romances, and one for time travel narratives. While these would all at least still be book lists/discussions, it feels like people only care about new/recent releases these days, so I don’t know that anyone would care about reading lists of mostly-classics. I also have thoughts on indulging some more of anime nerdiness – for instance, I’ve considered writing about Robotech (an American dub/adaptation of a Japanese anime that aired in 1985, and one of my personal obsessions). I’ve also thought about writing about art more. And I’ve had a grand idea for a big essay about an obscure 1940s novel called The Journal of Albion Moonlight bouncing around my head for years. So yeah, the ideas are ALL OVER THE PLACE.
I suppose what I’m saying is that these are things that might happen in 2023, but I’m not certain yet, because despite my best friend’s assurances that it’s my blog and I can do what I want with it, I’m still a bit tired of screaming into an empty void. If anyone has an opinion in one direction or the other, please feel free to comment.
My final announcement is a big one for me personally. For the first time in TWELVE YEARS, I have successfully “won”/completed the NaNoWriMo challenge! I cannot tell you how excited I am to finally accomplish this again after so many attempts! I actually hit the official word count goal, 50k words, on Monday, November 28th. And then I spent the last two days of the month seeing if I could stretch that word count a bit before Nano was officially over. I finally ended up with: 55,828 words, nearly 6k over the word goal!
So yeah, I’m pretty stoked about that!
Anyway, that’s a lot of information and ideas to throw at you all so I’ll stop talking now. If anyone has any opinions/feelings on any of this, please feel free to comment! In the meantime, have a good weekend and happy “start of December and the mad-rush to the new year” season, everyone!
Apologies for missing my Friday post deadline last week! I’ve been working like crazy to find a new job. Filling out dozens of applications, revising and re-revising my resume, drafting bunches of cover letters… I’ve had a handful of phone interviews that haven’t gone anywhere, and I have an in-person interview tomorrow (fingers crossed, friends!).
I’ve also been doing a little bit of freelance lesson writing for a study website, AND I’ve been trying to submit a short story I wrote to some literature magazines. So… I just got very busy the week whizzed past me without my even really noticing. I’ll have a full blog post up this Friday on schedule, though!
A couple updates: *I just finished reading a couple great novellas I will try to write up reviews for soon. *Currently re-reading A Marvellous Light by Freya Marske (for the fifth time!) in preparation for the sequel A Restless Truth releasing on Nov 1st. *Also planning to re-read the very witchy sapphic romance Payback’s a Witch later this week in the spirit of the Halloween season!
I suck! I know! I’m sorry! I keep trying to keep this blog alive and then I keep disappearing. In my defense, it has been a really weird and difficult few months. I quit my job, I went on a big trip, and I’ve been sick with covid for the last TWO WEEKS (which is so frustrating! I’ve been miserable and zombie-fied for two weeks and it just keeps lingering and lingering!)
But let me backtrack to the beginning: In the first week of July, I officially left my position as office manager and book curator for the book sub box company I’ve been working for the last four years. I spent all of June working like an absolute MADWOMAN to prepare everything for the transition. I worked ridiculous hours, under quite a lot of stress, and all by myself. (I will add it was a perfectly amicable split. The owner and I were, and remain, good friends. It was just time for me to move on to other things).
I then spent most of July on a little vacation, enjoying the rare privilege of being voluntarily jobless. My plan was to give myself the month to relax and recharge, with the understanding that I would need to start looking for new work in earnest in August. I’d already been applying to some jobs (I’ve been trying to get my foot in the publishing/editing door) to little avail, but if that proved unsuccessful I was content to go find some wage work in retail somewhere just to pay the bills. In the meantime, I wrote some, I read a lot, I slept a good amount (I’d more than earned it). And I prepared for August.
Because August was going to be a big deal. You see, I’d been accepted to the Futurescapes Writers’ Workshop taking place Aug 8-12th, in Snowbird, Utah.
In an effort to take my writing more seriously, I applied to several workshops and writer’s residencies in the first half of the year. Futurescapes was the smallest/most affordable of the bunch, which made it a really good starting place for me. Some workshops (like the very famous Clarion and Clarion West workshops) are multiple weeks long and cost several thousand dollars. Futurescapes (like Clarion) is a workshop exclusively for science fiction, fantasy, and horror, BUT it’s a condensed high-intensity four-day event, and costs $1600 (which included the workshop itself as well as room & board).
Futurescapes had been running on a purely virtual model the last couple years because of the pandemic, and this was the first in-person workshop they had done since 2019. I thought it would be a good first outing for me, as I had no previous experience in any kind of writing workshop outside of a couple classes in my undergrad several lifetimes ago. And unlike most other workshops, the Futurescapes mentors are mostly publishing professionals such as agents and editors rather than authors (which offers some really great insider insight to getting the first publication).
This year’s workshop took place at a ski resort (off-season right now, of course) called Snowbird, up in the mountains about 45 minutes outside of Salt Lake City. The scenery was beautiful. The weather was shockingly gorgeous. When I left Houston it was 101 degrees. Up in the mountains it was about 69 degrees. I could barely contain my absolute glee over the cool temperatures. However, the altitude change was pretty brutal the first day. Houston is about 70 ft above sea level (in some spots its actually below sea level). Meanwhile, Snowbird was approximately 8100 ft above sea level! With the altitude difference, and the air being thinner and much drier than I’m used to, I was pretty ill the first day — headaches and dizziness and all that. And even after I acclimated, I still had to drink water NON. STOP. I jokingly told my mother I’d discovered I was so used to Houston humidity that I was, in fact, a fish. I had a huge 32 oz water bottle with me, and I emptied and refilled the thing around 6 times per day! Still, it was absolutely glorious up in the mountains, and a very large part of me did not want to leave!
Snowbird Resort (one of several hotel/lodges at the location)
The basic setup was this: accepted applicants are placed into groups of 6-7 and assigned a “primary mentor” (mostly in accordance with our previously-stated preferences of first choice). Most of our feedback comes from that primary mentor. However, on each day of the workshop, the groups also rotate to working with the other mentors, so that we all have an opportunity to receive feedback from and network with the other professionals in attendance. One day is spent critiquing a manuscript excerpt for each member of the group (not the whole manuscript, but a sizable opening chunk). The next day focuses on the draft of a query letter we would send out to prospective agents. And the third day focuses on the synopsis of the full novel (easily the most evil genre of writing in the business). And then there is always time for Q&A sessions, social activities, and general mingling/networking.
My primary mentor was Dongwon Song (they/them), an agent with Morhaim Literary and by far my top choice. I’ve been following Dongwon on Twitter since 2011. And I have told multiple people over multiple years that they would be dream agent if/when I ever got published. Dongwon was just as amazing in person as they are online and it was such a delight to be able to meet them and work with them and chat with them over multiple days. In addition, the other writers in my group were all amazing. I loved having the opportunity to read their manuscript excerpts, and get their feedback on my writing (I was probably the weakest one in the bunch if I’m being honest), and just talk with them all. One of the writers in my group actually had the amazing good fortune of landing an agent just before the workshop started! I was very impressed and happy for them, and of course, a tiny bit jealous.
Me, at the top of the mountain at Snowbird
One of the highlights, however, was actually being “adopted” by one of the other groups. Lol! For context, the workshop started with an open hour for breakfast in the morning, with coffee and muffins and such provided. You were not required to attend,so people came and went as they wished before things officially started each morning. Most of my group, just by coincidence, tended not to show up til right before we were starting our sessions, whereas I was usually one of the first down for breakfast (I’m just neurotic that way). So I would grab a table and a couple other early birds would join me, and before long the table would be filled with mostly people from one of the other groups. So we chatted a lot in between official events. And just as a matter of course, I ended up hanging out with the people in this other group rather a lot during meals and break periods and such. So much so that on our free unscheduled morning we all decided to take a tram the resort provided up to the top of the mountain where the skiiing starts in winter. And then, the group invited me out to dinner with them on the last evening, and announced they were “officially adopting” me. It was ridiculously touching. I really adore all of them. And were are all keeping in touch via email and discord (which is true of my actual critique group as well, of course).
View from the top of the mountain (note the rain in the distance!)
The actual critique sessions themselves were hugely helpful. I learned so much about both craft issues and the business-side of the publishing world. I got a bunch of really useful feedback and suggestions on my manuscript. This feedback did, unfortunately, result in me feeling like I probably need to explode my entire manuscript, dismantle it, and try to put it back together again (better this time). And it was valuable feedback to receive particularly because I write mostly in a vacuum — I don’t have a writers group to routinely talk to or share work with, and I had gotten to a point where i just could not tell what was, and was not, working. So it was information I needed. Did I hope I was a little better off than I apparently am? Sure. But that’s the nature of the beast.
My critique group, with Dongwon Song (in the navy shirt and yellow shoes)
It was an absolutely wonderful experience. I learned a ton. I had a lot of great conversations with interesting people. And I had the opportunity to spend time in an environment I would never otherwise have had access to. If you are a genre writer looking to learn more about the publishing business and your own craft, I highly recommend checking out Futurescapes.
Hello folks, and sorry for the minor delay! Busy days, busy days. I have a couple book reviews I need to get written soon, and should have one for you next weekend. For today, here’s some of the books I’ve been reading lately. Plus a couple book playlists, because anyone who knows me knows I love a fun book-themed playlist!
So without further ado, what Amanda is currently reading:
The Ballad of Perilous Graves by Alex Jennings – this book is releasing in June, and I’m reading the arc right now. This book is EXCELLENT! It features a magical New Orleans where magic is performed through music, ghosts haunt the city, and graffiti has come to life and wanders the streets driving people mad if they walk through the paint. I have no idea how it’s going to end! You can definitely expect a review when I finish this book.
Zen and the Art of Saving the Planet by Thich Nhat Hanh – this is the last book that came out before Thich Nhat Hanh’s death in January, though it actually a collection of some previous talks, writings, interviews, etc that had been compiled by his students following his stroke a few years ago. I have a hardcover copy of this book, but I am also listening to the audiobook right now, particularly while I work.
Book of Gothel by Mary McMyne – this is also an arc I’m reading, and the book will be out in July. It’s a feminist, semi-historically-grounded take on the Rapunzel fairytale. I’m not very far into yet, but it is very good so far and I’m curious to see how the author will twist the traditional elements of the tale.
Sisters of the Forsaken Stars by Lina Rather – I read and reviewed the first novella, Sisters of the Vast Black, last year and loved it. This novella is a direct continuation so, of course, I had to grab it! I haven’t actually started this one yet, it’s next on the pile as soon as I finish one of the above, lol.
Last Call at the Nightingale by Katharine Schellman – I actually JUST finished this one (another arc for a book releasing in June) and this will likely by the review I get written up for next week!
So that’s what I’m currently reading. You can likely expect reviews for most, if not all, of these (time depending, of course). In the meantime, here’s a couple of the book playlists I’ve put together lately, just for the fun of it!
Playlist for Nettle & Bone – here’s the playlist I made to go with Nettle & Bone, which I just reviewed a couple weeks ago. This book officially released last Tuesday, so if you haven’t bought it yet, GET THEE HENCE!
Playlist for Spindle Splintered– I didn’t actually write a review of Spindle Splintered by Alix Harrow because I read it last year when the blog was dead in the water. But the sequel is coming out soon, so I might read that and then review both together… possibly. In the meantime, have a playlist!
Playlist for King of Infinite Space – here’s another one for a book I read last year and didn’t review. King of Infinite Space by Lindsay Faye is a queer, modern-day, magical realist take on Hamlet, and it is EXCELLENT. I cried so bad at the end! I pulled this playlist together for it right after finishing the book. Enjoy!
Ok, that’s all from me for today! Expect a review next Saturday!
Hello, first of all I wanted to share an update about my baby boy, Mr. Erasmus Flattery. He had his surgery last Friday, and we picked him up from surgery that evening. The surgery was extensive and, frankly, horrifying to hear about. They quite literally made him a new urethra and the vet said he will essentially “pee like a girl” now. But the vet said the surgery went very well. He woke up from the anesthesia just fine, purring and being his adorable self, and all the vet techs were enamored with him (as they well should be! He’s the sweetest thing!).
He is NOT happy about the cone.
The real trick is going to be the next 2 weeks. We have to keep a cone on him for 2 whole weeks (cat owners will know how difficult this is!) and keep him from running around too much (we have a large crate for him for at least the first few days). It is vital that he not have any infection or pull his stitches. If he licks his stitches it could cause an infection or cause the new urethra to close up, which would be almost certainly life-threatening. So the next 2 weeks are going to be stressful. But if we get him safely past the next 2 weeks he should be totally fine, excepting for a permanent diet change to a prescription urinary health food.
My mother and I crunched the numbers, and we figure that between the two of us, with three cats with various medical issues, we have paid the vet approximately $10k in the last month. So, budgets are very very tight right now.
I won’t harp on it much more, I promise, but I would like to share my new kofi again, just in case. If you can spare even a couple bucks toward the care and feeding of 12 cats, including several sick kitties, it would be greatly appreciated. My kofi is at https://ko-fi.com/nightforestbooks
In other news, I’m in a bit of a reading slump right now. I’m still reading, but it is going very slowly right now, and I’m also doing a lot of RE-reading. When my stress and anxiety levels are really bad, re-reading all my comforting favorites is about all I can handle. So I will definitely still have posts up the next couple weeks, but they will probably not be for new and upcoming releases. In the works, I have a book review of a few middle-grade graphic novels by Ethan M. Aldridge, a reminiscence about reading Tamora Pierce’s Immortals Quartet, and perhaps a discussion of some romance novels I’ve been devouring the last year or so.
I also wanted to hear everyone’s thoughts on something I’m planning on: I’ve been thinking about doing a big read-though and discussion for The Locked Tomb series by Tamsyn Muir in preparation for the release of Nona the Ninth in September. I’ve already read Gideon, so that would be a re-read for me, but I had not yet gotten to Harrow so that would be new for me. So my thought is that I would re-read and discuss Gideon the Ninth throughout the month of July, and then Harrow the Ninth in August, and finally jump into Nona when it is released in mid-September. I would invite people to read along with me and split each book into about fourths (a fourth for each week of the month), and then I would do some in-depth discussion and some guesses for what might be coming in Nona. Is this something anyone would be interested in? Would people like to join me on a read-through?
Relatedly, have you seen the full Nona the Ninth poem that Tor.com revealed? Here it is:
One of my best friends (who first badgered me into reading The Locked Tomb books) and I were freaking out over this poem, trying to figure out what it MEANS, what clues are in it, or what clues are in the previous books that might explain it! Our reactions pretty much looked like this:
If you had any reactions to the poem, please feel free to share! I’d love to know we’re not the only ones freaking out. Also, any thoughts on the possibility of a Locked Tomb read-through? Let me know!
Bonus post this week! I didn’t want to skip a book-focused post for Saturday, but I also wanted to just chat with you all for sec, so… extra post it is! And I’m here to talk about what we have all be up to lately. On one hand, it feels like none of us have been up to much of anything since the pandemic started. On the other hand, it feels like everything is so crazy and stressful that surely we’ve all be doing SOMETHING or another, right?
So I’d love to hear what everyone has been up to the lately. I mentioned in my first post coming back that I’ve been reading quite a bit, I’ve been writing (a lot), and I’ve been working like crazy. And, of course, all the hobbies keep piling up. I collect hobbies almost as much as I collect books, apparently.
I’m still working on cross-stitch, a new crafting hobby I started at the beginning of hte pandemic in March 2020. I was really proud when I finished this pattern of the Disneyland Castle:
I kept up with the cross-stitch habit pretty consistently in 2020 and the first half of 2021, but it started to fall apart in the second half of last year. BUT! I have started on another pattern, and I’ve bought far more patterns than I will possibly be able to manage this year. Hopefully I can get back into the habit and it’ll be fun to see how far I get.
I’m trying to relearn how to draw and paint. I took a couple art courses a lifetime ago when I was in community college (mostly in pencil drawing), and I’ve never had any actually training in painting. I was never a great artist even though I love art. I’m… okay, I guess. Still, I’ve decided this is the year I just say “fuck it” and just start making art when I feel like it, and the skill will hopefully come as I go along. Here’s a couple of the pencil drawings I’ve done recently:
And, my very first attempts at acrylic painting EVER, which I did last month! –
Last August, I flew to Omaha to visit my best friend. It was a bit of a risk, of course, though when I bought the plane tickets it had been looking like things were finally starting to quiet down a bit (boy, what a false alarm THAT turned out to be). But I hadn’t seen my best friend since 2018 and I was desperate to see her. And we were very careful and I managed to avoid catching covid, thank goodness.
In other news, I have applied for the Clarion West Summer Writer’s Workshop. I’ve been wanting to do this for ages, and never felt ready, either in terms of skill or in terms of the necessary free time and financial support. I don’t know that any of those three categories are really ready this year, either, but I decided it was time to finally TRY. Most people don’t get accepted to Clarion West on the first attempt, so I’m not holding my breath. But I figured, if I can’t get accepted until my third or fourth (or whatever) application attempt, that still means I have to START APPLYING eventually. So. I did. I should be hearing about acceptance/rejection (let’s be real, I’m just waiting for the confirmed rejection) by the end of March.
In addition, I’m hoping to write a couple short stories this year and start shopping those out to lit magazines. I have just finished second revisions of my novella, and I’m thinking about finding a few beta readers to see what more needs to be done with it before I start thinking about querying for an agent.
The long and the short of it is that I’m DONE WAITING. It’s time to gain some forward momentum SOMEHOW.
So how about you, dear readers? What have you been doing during all the craziness of the last couple years? Just surviving is more than enough, of course! I applaud everyone who has gotten through the last two years with even a modicum of sanity left. But if you’ve been keeping yourselves busy with anything interest or fun, I’d love to hear about it! Or if you’ve been doing nothing but working and watching Netflix, I’d love to hear about that too! (My own tv-viewing habits are sporadic and idiosyncratic, so feel free to tell me what good things you’re watching!)
Please tell me you get this reference? Don’t make me feel old…
I keep trying to do this, and I keep failing, but here we go again. One last time. I swear, if I fail to keep up with the blog this time, I should probably just wave the white flag.
The problem is that the amount of free time I have is very limited (between work, family obligations, and all those stupid grown-up things like house-cleaning and grocery shopping), and I have a LOT of hobbies. I have so far been unable to find a balance that allows me to fit the maximum number of hobbies into my very limited store of free time.
But of course, my main goal has been to write more. If I have only one or two hours of free time all week, and I want to write, I am going to choose fiction writing over blog writing. Just a fact of life. And that actually WORKED(!) for me last year. I wrote more in 2021 than I have ever written in a single year in my life. Over 200,000 words! I finished the first draft of one novel I started in Nov 2020, wrote the entire first draft of a novella, and then about ¾ of the first draft of ANOTHER novel in the second half of the year. So, writing has been going SHOCKINGLY well lately (*knock on wood*) (well, I say that, it HAD been going well until December and I haven’t been able to get back into it the last couple months), and I don’t want to mess that up.
That said, I also read a lot. And I do want to share what I read, and write reviews, and promote the books and authors I really love. I talk a lot about the books I’ve been reading on Twitter, but it’s not the same as writing a full review, and I know it. I want to do that for the authors I think deserve more attention. It’s just so hard to find the time! And yes, I know I could post reviews on Goodreads. But the amount of time it takes to write a semi-decent review is going to be the same whether I post it here or on Goodreads, and frankly, I don’t LIKE Goodreads, so…
In any case, I’d like to try again. I want to make this work. So, here’s my plan. I am going to try to give myself a strict schedule, and block out time specifically for blog writing/posting once a week. And I am going to wait to start posting until I have a few pre-written and ready to go to give myself a bit of a buffer (for instance, I’m writing this in mid-February but I probably won’t post it until I’m ready to get the weekly-schedule going). And am I going to try to keep myself to a weekly post schedule… I’m thinking every Saturday evening, for the moment.
Alright alright alright!
Not every post will be a book review, of course. You’ll notice from my old posts that I did sometimes talk about other things, that will no doubt remain true. But I will be focusing most of my energy on book reviews, both of books I read last year and kept MEANING to review, and of books I’m reading this year. And I suppose… (*grumble grumble grumble*) I could maybe possibly make a new Goodreads account and cross-post reviews there. Maybe. I don’t know. I just don’t like Goodreads interface, or the attitudes of some of the readers/reviewers there, or the weird amount of power Goodreads has acquired over authors… Anyway… not my point, moving on.
So, I guess if I have any readers left (not likely, I realize, but one never knows…), this is your heads-up to start expecting posts from me again.
Amanda Haimoto Rudd 