Oh Dear

Well, I saw The Hunger Games yesterday. It was fantastic. Of course. A good story, well written, well acted, with some very immersive cinematography. It was just over two hours of pure escape, and it was a lovely way to spend my afternoon (though the story itself of course dealt with some less than lovely topics).

There were some definite deviations from the book, but I didn't have any problems with them. I like the way they got around how much of the book is Katniss internally thinking about how things are playing to the audience and the game-makers. I thought that worked really well, and was not at all surprised at the end to see that the author, Suzanne Collins, had a screenwriting and executive producer credit on the film. I am glad she got consulted and was given final approval on those changes. The other changes mostly served to keep the narrative streamlined, I felt, and though I was sad at one character getting totally left out, I understood why it was done that way.

There were several moments when I teared up or was just outright crying. They did an amazing job of conveying the emotional impact of that story. Even though I knew pretty much what was coming the whole time, the second that Katniss volunteered to take Prim's place in the games, my heart leaped into my throat. It was crazy.

This movie is insane good. Even if you haven't read the book, I think you would still enjoy it quite a bit. Then you would go out and buy or borrow the books. Because, damn.

I had really intended to hold off on reading the next two books in the series until after I had finished some other stuff. I really did. But the ending of the movie, and some hints at what the fallout for the characters to come might be left me craving for more.

I started Catching Fire yesterday. I had a really hard time putting it down last night. I about cried when I finished my designated "last" chapter for the evening, because all I wanted to do was turn the page to find out what happened next. I've played Dragon Age for a sum total of I think thirty minutes since I've gotten back from my trip. Suzanne Collins has created a world and characters that just suck you in and keep you immersed from start to finish. Even now I am  itching to get back to the book.

Man, I love when a book does that to me.

Have a great weekend folks. Hopefully you've got a book that you are enjoying as much as I am this series!

May the odds be ever in your favor.

Irregular Reading

You know, I have noticed over the last few years that my reading habits have altered quite a bit. For one thing, I don't read nearly as much as I used to. I think this is largely because, with a few exceptions, I don't like reading during my daughter's awake time. This is partly because I want/need to keep an eye on her and interact with her, which is hard to do when my nose is in a book (I get really immersed when I read and tend to become completely oblivious to my surroundings). Also though, it isn't as enjoyable for me to read because I am so easily distracted, I have a hard time sinking into the story. Then, a lot of my child-free time is spent doing other things I can't do when she's up and about (and playing video games).

That isn't to say that a good enough book won't get me to find a way to read read read, however.

Case in point:

Even though I am about halfway through the final Eragon book, Inheritance, and knew that I would have at least some quality reading time when I went on my trip last week, I did not take the book with me to California. This is because the book is freaking huge and I really did not feel like trying to lug it around in my carry-on, weight-wise or space-wise. So instead I took a stack of comic books and my shiny new Kindle, which I hadn't really taken out for much of a spin yet (even though it is already crammed full of books for me to read).

I finished the comic books about halfway through the flight out and then fired up the Kindle and pulled up The Secret Garden. I started reading this to my daughter at bed time, a chapter or two a night, last November. But right around Christmas she decided she wanted to start interacting with story time and we've been reading her picture books together instead. I knew it was coming, but I wasn't really expecting it to happen in the middle of an awesome book. Silly me. Anyway, the book was available as a free download from Amazon (huzzah for public domain!) so it was one of the first to get loaded on my Kindle. I love love love that story, it is one of my all time favorites, so I really wanted to finish reading it. I finally got the chance this past week.

Not too long into the return flight, I finished that book. Then, I scrolled through my Kindle for a bit deciding what to start reading next, knowing that I probably wouldn't finish it before I got home and returned to Inheritance (not to mention A Clash of Kings, which I am reading along with Leigh over at Tor.com). After a little bit of waffling, I decided to give The Hunger Games a try. I have been wanting to read it for well over a year now, and with the movie so recently in theaters, it has been more on my mind than ever. Plus, it was right there at my fingertips. Easy decision, really.

But back to my point. I got about a quarter of the way through it on the flight, and even though I have had plenty of other stuff to do since I got home, I made the time to keep on reading this story. Because ohmygoodnessitissoamazing. I mean, I knew that it would be good. Several fellow readers close to me in whom I have complete trust have recommended it highly. Also, the internet discussion of it has suggested at its wonderfulness quite clearly. It's one of those rare series that I have recommended/gifted to people even without reading because I believed the people who told me it was so good. But wow, I was not prepared to not be able to put it down. It is rare that a book gets me like that these days. It is quite a wonderful treat, to be honest.

I finished it up on Tuesday and immediately dropped a few dollars at Amazon to pick up the other two books in the trilogy, but I am hoping I can make myself wait to read them. I still have some other books to finish. Which, now that I think about it, is another way my reading habits have really changed over the last few years. Outside of school, which I don't really think counts for leisure reading, I have never been one to read more than one book at once. This past week I had three going. That's more than a little bit insane to me. Still, a good story is a good story, right?

Do you have any weird reading habits? Have you noticed yours changing over the years as life presents you with new and differing circumstances? What books have you picked up and just not been able to put down?

I can't help but wonder how my habits will change further over the next few years. As my daughter gets older, will I be able to revert back to my old reading habits a little bit more? Will I start juggling even more books as I try to pre-read anything she wants to get her hands on to make sure it is appropriate? Hmm...I definitely look forward to seeing where this road I am on takes me to next, that's for sure!

In the meantime, well, today I get to take myself out for a lunchtime movie date. Guess what I am going to see?

Book Review: Elantris

This past weekend, I finished reading Elantris by Brandon Sanderson, and I have to say, I was pretty darn impressed with the work from start to finish. Elantris is Sanderson's first published novel and unlike most of his other works, it is a stand alone story. It is an amazingly solid first entry and after reading it I am not even a little bit surprised that Sanderson wound up being tagged by Robert Jordan to finish the Wheel of Time series after his death. I have really enjoyed his entries into that particular series and they made me very interested to check out his own original work. I settled on Elantris as my starting point because I had heard some pretty good buzz about it, and I'll admit, I am keeping up with enough series at the moment that jumping into another one seemed a bit daunting.

Sanderson is quite lauded by the fantasy community for his extremely well-developed and detailed systems of magic. Elantris is certainly no exception to this, which is all the more impressive because the most notable thing about magic in this book is its absence.

The story takes place about ten years after the fall of the eponymous city of Elantris. The Elantrians once ruled the nation of Arelon more or less benevolently, godlike beings with vast stores of magic at their very fingertips. Despite their amazing power and superiority to the mere humans of Arelon, they did not demand to be worshipped. In fact, they were quite content to let the humans practice their own varying religions without interference. Perhaps this is because every Elantrian was once a human. The beings were not born, but rather, one night a human would go to bed and the next morning he or she would wake up transformed into an Elantrian.

Under Elantris' rule, Arelon was a very powerful and prosperous nation until something went horribly awry. In an event called the Reod, the magic of Elantris suddenly stopped working. The Elantrians, without their power, became horribly disfigured but unable to die. Their hearts stopped beating, but their bodies went on, skin shriveling up and hair falling out. Hurts and injuries could not kill them, but nor would they heal, and the pain of those hurts endured, driving those who continued under their newly cursed existence mad. When the Reod came, the servants of Elantris rose up in revolt against their transformed masters. The merchant class stepped in, taking over and organizing a new government, declaring themselves the new nobility. The city of Elantris was locked up tight, its surviving citizens left to wallow in their never-ending misery. The Shaod, or transformation from human to Elantrian, did not stop occurring, however. Now, instead of being a blessing, it had become a curse. Those poor damned souls who changed were thrown into Elantris with a single basket of food and considered dead by the rest of the world.

The story begins with Arelon's prince, Raoden, finding that the Shaod has come upon him. He is not immune to the fate of the cursed and his father wastes no time in throwing him into Elantris. Raoden must find a way to survive his new circumstances and to avoid the madness that takes his new people. On that same day, two people arrive in the city of Kae, heart of Arelon since Elantris' fall. The first, Princess Sarene of Teod, was engaged to Prince Raoden, a political match to ally her nation with Arelon. She reaches her new home to learn that she is now a widow, the stipulations of her marriage contract declaring death by either party before the wedding the same as a wedding itself. She never had the chance to meet her husband and now she must find her place in her new home without him. She is quickly given purpose by the other newcomer to the city, however. Hrathen is a gyorn, or high priest, of Fjordell, an enemy nation to both Teod and Arelon. He has been sent to convert Arelon to his religion of Shu-Dereth within three months. Otherwise, Fjordell will invade and force conversion upon Arelon in the bloodiest manner possible.

Elantris rotates fairly smoothly between the perspectives of Raoden, Sarene, and Hrathen and tells the tale of each individual's struggle to fulfill a purpose. These three characters are absolute powerhouses of charisma and the reader is quickly swept into their world, eager to find out who will succeed and who will fail, and how each person's machinations will influence the other's.

For as much as religion is a key component to the story, I felt like its touch was astoundingly subtle throughout. There were, to me, very clear parallels to the state of organized religion in our world, and its influence on the citizens and nations, but I felt like Sanderson used that more as an inspiration to this work rather than using this work as a way to preach some personal message. The characters are the true center of this tale and Sanderson has done an amazing job of giving each believable motivations and actions. None are without their flaws, but those flaws are put to masterful use in weaving these three disparate threads together. As the story progresses, those three threads do become one steady piece of fabric, too. I never felt cheated by convenient coincidences, everything felt very natural.

There is something of the traditional "hero's quest" in this story, but Sanderson manages to make it feel fresh and new. The romance and intrigue and action and friendships and journeys of discovery all manage to come across as very true. Nothing feels forced, nothing feels trite. I also appreciate that Sanderson has clear and simple answers for most of this book's mysteries by the story's end. Yet, that being said, he didn't hesitate to introduce a few new loose ends for our characters in the process of providing them with the answers they sought. I am satisfied with the loose ends, however. To me, they suggest that these characters are only just starting out as the story is ending. I am free to imagine them continuing to go on and solve their new mysteries.

The ending is still an ending, however. There is no sense that Sanderson was trying to leave the back door open for a sequel, and I am glad of it. As I told my husband, I don't think this is a book that needs to be a series. Everyone (that survived, of course) ended on  pretty high note, and I was happy with how things turned out. That being said, I would love to read another story set in this universe in some other time period, before or after the events of Elantris, dealing with other characters. I suspect that there are many interesting stories to be told about Arelon and its neighbors.

This is the kind of book that makes me excited about writing. It is so amazingly well done. I was lucky enough to meet Sanderson last year when he did a tour for the most recent Wheel of Time book's release, and I hadn't yet read any of his own stories (that was actually when I picked this book up--I am super proud to have an autographed copy). I hope he does another tour for the last book and that I might get a chance to meet him again and thank him for this amazing story. Assuming I can actually get over my fangirl shyness and form coherent words, that is.

Anyhoo, fans of fantasy and magic and well-developed worlds and characters: Elantris by Brandon Sanderson. Check it out. I doubt you'll regret doing so.

Winter Reading List

Holy cow, my book pile just keeps on getting bigger. It's ridiculous, it is. Sigh.

I finally finished reading George R. R. Martin's A Game of Thrones, first in his A Song of Ice and Fire series and the source material for that apparently awesome television series that aired this past spring (whoo! I finally get to watch that now, don't I?). I took it slow, reading along with Leigh Butler over at Tor. Two(ish) chapters a week. It took a while.

I am really not sure if I will be able to hold back on the next four books though. That ending. Man. I mean, man.

Currently, I am reading Brandon Sanderson's Elantris. I will probably do a write-up of my thoughts on that when I finish it in the next week or two. It is pretty spectacular so far, and the ball has just started rolling downhill.

Leigh's ASoIaF read-along is on hiatus until January. I am thinking once I finish Elantris I might try to squeeze in the conclusion of N. K. Jemisin's Inheritance Trilogy, The Kindgom of Gods (it just arrived on Tuesday, much to my delight). After that I want to wrap up Christopher Paolini's Inheritance Cycle with Inheritance, which has been hanging out in my pile for about a month.

Probably I won't get finished with those two before Leigh starts up with A Clash of Kings, but I figure I can stick to the read-along schedule on that until I do. Then I can just plow through the rest of Martin's insanity. It will be like ripping off a band-aid, I suspect. Yeesh. That man. Not very nice to his characters. It's kind of delicious and terrible all at the same time.

After that...well...who knows? There are oh so many to choose from. There are worse problems I can think of.

Does anyone else have this kind of insanity going on in their bookshelves? What are you guys reading? (Please for the love of Pete, no suggestions though, I am full up at the moment!)

My Favorite Scares

Well, Halloween is right around the corner, and everyone is going on and on (and on) about all of the best scary stuff out there. I figured I might as well jump on the bandwagon. I know I recently decried the genre of horror in the wake of how annoyed I am by all of the absolute crap that gets pushed in my face this time of year,  every year. But that was, I think, unfair to horror. It's not that I don't like horror, it's that an insanely significant percentage of what passes for horror is honestly crap. It's not good. It just isn't. Yes, there's this nebulous field in the middle comprised of stuff that is so bad it ends up being good (or at least enjoyable), but that classification is much rarer than most people think. Especially these days when people make (or pretend after the fact that they were trying to make) "so bad it's good" on purpose. I am pretty sure that can only actually happen by accident.

But I digress.

I have also mentioned before that my favorite author is Stephen King. I am sad to say that a lot of people out there who are only familiar with his filmed work might be under the impression that he often falls under the "crap" category himself. These people are dead wrong. Unfortunately, there have been many disastrous attempts to adapt King's work to film and television over the last few decades. The reason these attempts so often result in, well, horror (though not the intended kind) is that King's work very largely is about ideas and a lot of his best scenes exist in the character's minds, or in internal dialog. That kind of stuff is just really difficult to translate to a visual medium. But the fact that people keep trying to do so (and every once in a while succeed) should tell you something. If you've never read any of King's work but have watched something based on one of his books hoping for a good scare and come away disappointed you need to do yourself a favor and go read the source material. Then you'll get it.

I am actually lucky enough to be getting to go see King in person next month when he comes through Dallas on his current book tour. My husband is a wonderful person and decided this was an opportunity we just could not pass up. I am very very excited. Between that and all of the horrible not-horror being shoved in my face at present, I have been thinking a lot about King, and about those really enjoyable scares I have found along the way.

Which is all a rather long-winded way of saying that today I thought I'd give you my top three favorite scary books. I could make a whole top ten (at least) just out of King's work, more than likely, but he only wrote two of the top three that came to mind when I started thinking on the topic, so I thought I would just stick with that.

3. It by Stephen King

Oh man, this book. I first read it all of the way through when I was in high school, I think, although it might have been junior high. I had long been aware of King though, my mom being a big fan of his as well (where do you think I got it from, eh?). Like most people my age with a well-developed fear of clowns, I can lay the blame for that solely upon this book. When I was in fifth grade there was a television miniseries based on it, that of course my mom watched, and with one television in the house, so did I (and so did a lot of those kids who ended up scared of clowns). While this miniseries fell somewhere in the middle quality of adaptations of King's work, Tim Curry's turn as Pennywise the clown, amazing and frightening as it was, had nothing on the written version. I get shivers just thinking of it, and to this day I still can't hear "Für Elise" without getting the creeps. It was my gateway King, and during college I read it again every summer, staying up crazy late reading and terrified to turn the lights out once I had finished for the night. Worth every minute. 

2. House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski

I honestly don't know how to describe this book. It is simultaneously the most freaky and fucked up book I have ever read. (Sorry for the profanity but that is the most accurate word.) It's more or less about this guy's quest to find out about an ostensibly haunted house. But it is so much more. Somewhere along the way it takes about four left turns at once and you are left struggling to keep going. It is a complete mind-trip and even the way the book itself is designed and printed adds to the experience. I barely made it through one reading of this book, but once was enough. This is a book that will never leave me. It is real work to read, but I am glad that I did read it, to be certain, and anyone who likes horror and haunting stories should definitely check it out. But do it in a well-lit room, with plenty of people around. On a random but kind of cool note, Danielewski is the brother of musician Poe, and her album Haunted actually ties in quite a lot with the book, the version of "Hey Pretty" with the spoken dialog takes that dialog directly from House of Leaves.  In the book there are lyrics quoted from the album. There was definitely a bit of collaboration between the two when the book and album were being created. So if you're a fan of Poe and horror but haven't read this book I would definitely recommend you check it out.

1. Bag of Bones by Stephen King

The story of an author who retreats to a cabin in the forests of rural Maine and then becomes ensnared in a supernatural plot, Bag of Bones is trademark King at its best. This is an amazingly powerful story and being written later in his career truly reflects how much his writing skills continued to grow and improve the more he wrote. The imagery in this book is vivid and startling. My scare-factor from this book was heightened by my first reading experience of it, to be sure. During spring break my freshman year of college some friends and I went to spend a long weekend at the unfinished cabin one of my friends' uncle was building in the middle of nowhere, Texas. We were pretty much camping out, and I had more than one good scare staying up late into the night reading this book in that cabin. Reading this book I have been the honest to goodness most scared by a book I have ever been in my life. Needless to say, I was pretty delighted to find out that A & E has made a miniseries adaptation of this book (the miniseries always seem to do King's work better justice than outright movies) that is due to air in December. I am really looking forward to that!

So there you have it, my top three favorite scary books. If you were looking for something good to dig into before Halloween, well, now you've got an excellent list of suggestions, don't you?

Book Review: Ghost Story By Jim Butcher

SPOILER LEVEL: Medium

(Very mild spoilers for Ghost Story itself but major spoilers for all of the books that came before it in the series.)

Now this is my kind of ghost story. I guess it is not uncommon for the main character of a book to start off dead, but it is pretty rare in the books that I tend to read. Jim Butcher makes it work, however, and he does so in an inventive and entertaining roller-coaster ride of a way. 

When I finished reading the last book in The Dresden Files series, Changes, I was curled up in bed and it was rather late at night. I still got up an ran to my computer the second I closed the cover to make sure that it was not, in fact, the final book in the series. You can see where ending the story by killing off the main character, the character who is the narrator of the books, would make one worry. Imagine my great relief then, dear reader, as my trusted friend the internet told me that there would indeed be a next book. That it was available to pre-order on Amazon already, even. Phew. HUGE sigh of relief. I went to bed that night surprised and shaken, but reassured that my questions* would be answered in time.

The most pressing of those questions, of course, being a tie between "Is Harry really dead?!?" and "Who killed Harry Dresden?"

Ghost Story manages to eventually answer both of these questions, along with a slew of others that you might not have even thought to ask. That right there is the true genius of Jim Butcher. It starts out just after Changes left off--with Harry dying. He finds himself in the tunnel with the bright light, but from there things stop going where he was expecting them to go. He is informed that he is "Between" (as in between life and death) and has been brought there because the party responsible for his death somehow cheated. Harry must find his killer and set things right before he can move on. Being Harry, of course, he gets a bit belligerent and threatens to drag his heels. Until he is informed that if he doesn't complete this task, three people he cares about very much will die. 

Best way to convince Harry Dresden to get his butt in gear? Show him a threat to the people he loves and has sworn to protect.

Of course it isn't really that easy. This is Harry we're talking about, nothing is ever that easy. And nothing is what it seems either. As a spirit, Harry has to learn a new set of rules and seek out a different sort of ally than he is used to working with. By the time he does manage to track down the pals from his life, he is presented with a whole new set of problems that keep getting in the way of his mission. For starters, Harry has been gone for six months by the time his spirit gets back to Chicago. Quite a bit has gone down in that time, largely as a result of his destruction of the vampires of the Red Court just before his death. Not only does Harry have to learn the new status quo of being a spirit, he has to learn how to deal with the new status quo among the living, which presents its own challenges to getting both his mission done and to helping his friends with their own problems.

Going in to Ghost Story, most readers will have the expectation of a fairly obvious endgame (I know that I did). That being the restoration of Harry to his body, and as a result, his regular life. After all, Jim Butcher has gone on the record as stating that he expects there to be about twenty-three books in the series when all is said and done, and Ghost Story is only number thirteen. I am not going to tell you whether or not that happens. I will tell you this: There is no reset. The old status quo is gone, broken, crumbled into microscopic pieces and brushed away to make space for the new order. I can't wait to find out just what shape that new order takes on. 

As a book in The Dresden Files series, this is a top-notch entry. Harry is at once both at his most vulnerable and most badass. We've seen him beaten down before, at a huge disadvantage and about to go up against insurmountable odds. We've never seen him do it quite like this--completely out of his element in a way he could never have imagined he would be, alone even when surrounded by his friends. If you love watching Harry get creative in order to get himself out of a pickle, this book is right up your alley. Ghost Story is the kind of tale most writers of series can only hope to write to close out their worlds. This is just the middle of the series, and Butcher left me with every confidence that things are only going to keep getting better. I'd call that pretty damn impressive, myself.

As just another book, to those not familiar with the series itself? Well, I could be a bit biased, but I think that Ghost Story still holds up. The story itself is amazingly solid. Certainly it relies on all that came before it, but Butcher does a wonderful job of giving in explanations for things a new reader might not know (or an old reader might have forgotten) without interrupting the flow of the narrative and without being annoying to those of us who (theoretically) already know this stuff. You know those "previously, on" segments at the start of so many television shows these days? Yeah, it's nothing like that. I think someone who just happened to wander into a bookstore and pick up Ghost Story, or who received a copy as a gift, might be a little confused here and there, but not enough so to lose the thread of the story at all, the narrative does such a good job of moving forward and keeping the reader completely immersed and intrigued about what comes next. Would I recommend this book as a starting point for someone looking to pick up The Dresden Files? Hell no. But I do think that someone who just wandered into it first would still enjoy it, and would be quite likely to want to go back and check out the series from the beginning.

As I flew through this book (and make no mistake, fly I did, finishing it in four days, with the rest of my life still happening), there were only two things that bugged me at all. The first was, of course, that rather "obvious" conclusion that I assumed the book was heading towards. But I was curious enough about how Butcher would get us there (or even, after a certain point, if that was where it was headed after all) that I was more than willing to just go along for the ride and let the story unfold. The second was something that seemed like a glaring omission on the part of Butcher--a character that should have been mentioned or at least thought of by Harry almost from the start and who seemed to have been completely overlooked. I won't lie, I  was mad about that omission--until I got to the part where the omission was revealed to be quite deliberate and I was given the why of the matter, a very satisfying why, as it turned out. This is the kind of book where, if you are paying attention, you think you know exactly where it is headed, but don't mind reading on anyway to get there. Then, when you least expect it, you are rewarded with a sharp left turn that you totally didn't see coming. Even when my suspicions were on the right track, I really didn't know the half of it.

I can't imagine that someone who has been reading this series wouldn't want to pick this book up, at least not once they had gotten to Changes, but if you have been dithering, I promise you, you want to go get this book now. Right now. Go ahead, I'll wait....There. See? Totally worth it, wasn't it?

*The truly clever thing about Changes was that the manner in which it ended managed to completely distract me from asking or even thinking about one very important question in particular. I suspect most people also forgot to ask this question, or asked entirely the wrong question about this situation. Butcher is a sneaky bastard who did this on purpose, and wow, does it pay off at the end of Ghost Story.

Writing Is Kind Of A Bitchy Mistress

So, it's Thursday. Which means you should be looking at a new installment of Glyphs. Yet there is no new installment in sight. Sadly, there isn't going to be one any time soon either. Sigh.

I fought with myself about this all weekend and most of this week, but I finally had to admit to myself what I have  known pretty much since I started posting this story online. It just isn't happening. As of now Glyphs is officially on hold. I don't know when I will start it back up again. I certainly hope that I do, I can tell you that much. Writer's Podium Thursday is, in fact, also going away for the time being. I haven't quite decided yet what I am going to change my Thursday posts to. Until I decide, they are gonna be anything goes along the lines of the Friday posts. I've got a lot of great books waiting for me to read them, and I am hoping to finally be in a place where I can make myself take time to do that, so I might start doing more book reviews. It is one possibility I am looking at. In fact, let's just call it "Multimedia Thursday" and make that the home for all things TV, books, video games, or movies. Yeah, okay, that works.

I am truly, truly sorry to any of you who had started reading Glyphs and were looking forward to more. The story is there, in my head. I know what happens, I have the whole arc outlined and written out. I toyed with going ahead and putting that up in this space, but that would feel even more like giving up than just putting the project on hold, and I am not ready to give up on this tale just yet.

I follow the blogs of several writers, and many of them have expressed a philosophy that goes something along the lines of: "If you truly want to be a writer, you will make the time to write. You will find a way to do it."

I firmly believe that philosophy. And here's the thing, I do make/find the time to write, you are reading my blog after all, and it is updated five days a week. It's just that what I am writing these days isn't a story. I still have story ideas all of the time. Heck, the other day and idea came to me and I thought, hey, if I wrote Mass Effect fan fiction, this would be an excellent idea. That's just an example, by the way, not all of my ideas are for fan fiction. Not that I would be complaining if they were, because if I was writing fanfic I would at least be writing a story. It can be much less stressful to play in someone else's sandbox for a while, you know?

I got really excited about Glyphs and I jumped right into the deep end with it. Unfortunately I didn't make sure to stretch first, and I got all cramped up once in the water. It was easy enough to find things to blame for the lack of progress, to be sure. My playthrough of Dragon Age was certainly a distraction. But then I finished that, and I started finding other excuses not to work on the story. I randomly decided to start reading a webcomic with 1200 strips under its belt from the very beginning (um, in an entirely unrelated note, Girls With Slingshots is complete and total awesome-sauce, go check it out), I have assembled furniture, I started freaking exercising so I would have go to bed earlier (meaning I couldn't stay up to write after my daughter goes to bed). I mean, come on. When you start exercising to avoid doing something, that's a sign.

On top of all of that? I've been done with my playthrough of Dragon Age less than a week and I already kind of want to play it again. I also really want to start another playthrough of Mass Effect (which is why I was thinking about it enough to come up with a fanfic idea). Can't write and play a video game concurrently. At least I can't. For those of you wondering, the logic behind that is this:

When I write a story, I need to be able to just sit down and do it, with no distractions. The period of time in my average day when I can do this? When my daughter is a asleep, which means during naptime (when I do have other stuff I need to get done as well) and either staying up late after she goes to bed, or getting up early before she does (can't really do both of those).

When I play a game, I tend to get really into it and zone out most of what is going on around me. This is less than ideal if I am also supposed to be keeping an eye on my daughter. Thus, the time available for me to game is...when my daughter is asleep.

I think you see the conflict here.

Thing is, and this really was hard to admit to myself, right now I would rather play video games (or possibly reading a book) than be writing a story. I would rather get lost in someone else's world than try to create one of my own at this current stage in my life.

It makes me happier.

Do I expect this to last forever? Hell no. Do I still consider myself a writer. Yes. Very much so. Writing is an integral part of who I am. I don't think I will ever stop considering myself a writer. Like I said before, I do still make the time to write. Just because it isn't what I feel like I should be writing doesn't make it less valid. I am a grown woman (as much as I hate to admit it sometimes) and I am not only capable, but I am totally allowed to make these kinds of decisions for myself. As much as I believe the "if you really want it to happen, you will make it happen," philosophy I also very much believe that if something is just not there, forcing it won't make anything better. I still feel a bit like even just putting this story on hold is a huge failure on my part. When I told this to my husband he pointed out that if you never fail at anything then you aren't pushing yourself hard enough. He's got a point.

I truly believe I have another story in me that needs to be told. Glyphs is not that story. At least not right now. I don't know what that story is, but I am willing to wait for it to make its journey to me.

So, thanks for sticking around to read this. I hope no one is too disappointed that Glyphs won't be continuing here.

I'll try to come up with something interesting to fill its place.

I Think They Are Reproducing When I Am Not Looking

Yesterday I finished the second book in Fandemonium's Stargate Atlantis Legacy series. This is the series (I think it is planned to be six books, but I could totally be making that up) that sets out to provide answers to all of the questions left when Stargate Atlantis finished its five-season run on television. Without going into too much detail, I will say that so far it is completely AWESOME (I want Jo Graham to be involved with every Stargate Atlantis book that Fandemonium puts out going forward, seriously). If you are feeling the forthcoming lack of Stargate goodness, you should really check these books out.

After I finished the book, I put it on the bookshelf and then went to grab the next book in my reading pile. Ahh, my reading pile. After retrieving the next book to read, I went ahead and did something I have been meaning to do for a while now. I tackled the pile and gave it a good reorganizing.

It needed it.

I had been putting the books on a dresser in the bedroom in two vertical stacks (and one messy pile of comic books and graphic novels). These stacks were starting to get perilous though, and frequently I have found myself pushing books closer to the wall so as to prevent toppling. So yesterday I pulled everything off the dresser (then dusted because, um, yeah) and spread it all out and really took a look at what I had.

I sorted the books by priority, as in, which books I really wanted to read and in what order. This is harder than it sounds. For instance, the last four books are last not because I don't want to read them very much but because I will have to read the first three books in that particular series again before I can get to those four. Still, I think I managed a good queue. Then I put them back on the dresser in a much neater (and hopefully safer) fashion. They are now in three horizontal rows, with the ones I am most excited about in the front.

I have four books pre-ordered from Amazon right now (one of which will immediately go to the front of the queue when it gets here, the other three are of middling priority). I am going to try very hard to only purchase any new books in series that I am already reading for the rest of the year (i.e., Stargate books). Plus, every six weeks I get a new Stephen King book because I am totally doing the Stephen King book club thing. Some of these are just hardcover versions of books we already have in paperback and are upgrading, but those that aren't will go to on the pile in the back. I don't think there's any way for me to not continue adding to the pile. Me not buying any new books is not a thing that is going to happen. But hopefully I can stanch the flow until I get some of these knocked out.

Also, I have resolved to do a reorg after I finish a "row" to keep the pile from turning into a leaning tower of scary again. That just seems like a sensible idea.

This whole project has reminded me that I don't read anywhere near as much as I like to anymore. Sadly, I am pretty sure video games take the brunt of the blame for that. I am usually playing during the time that is most ideally suited for me to read. I think when I finish my current game sequence, I may need to take a break from video games again for a while and dive into the books. With the nicer weather coming on hopefully that won't be too difficult, since reading outside will have a decent appeal.

Right now my plan is to read the book I just started (another Stargate book, the last in my pile for the time being and a quick read) and then get to my huge pile of comic books and graphic novels:

My current pile of graphic novels and comic books to tackle.

Once I've survived that, it will be time to start climbing Everest.

The newly reorganized reading pile.

I am actually really excited about that first row! For the curious, here is what it contains:

Tongues of Serpents by Naomi Novik (part of the Temeraire series)
Blackveil by Kristen Britain (part of the Green Rider series)
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin (book one of The Inheritance Trilogy)
The Broken Kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin (book two of The Inheritance Trilogy)
The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
Elantris by Brandon Sanderson
Star Wars: Knight Errant by John Jackson Miller
Gwenhwyfar: The White Spirit by Mercedes Lackey

So, yeah, good stuff all around.

The Year of Multitasking

It all started innocently enough. I decided that 2011 would be the year that I finally jumped into the craft of knitting, in addition to my already existing mad crochet skills. I already have two completed projects (a pair of slippers and a hat) under my belt. I thought the easiest way to maintain balance would be to alternate between knitting and crochet projects. This worked for a while.

But then I started on THE project, you know the one, I've mentioned it often enough. Yes, I am talking about the Doctor Who scarf. Good lord, for such a simple and straightforward pattern, this thing managed to completely derail me. I would find myself going for a whole week without doing any knitting or crocheting, pick up the scarf for a day or two, and then more days of not doing anything. Blame it on the tediousness of the super simple pattern, blame it on February, whatever the reason, I was not happy with my crafting lethargy.

THEN I looked at a calendar and realized, holy cow, there are quite a few people in my life having babies in fairly short order! People that I actually do want to make baby blankets for. (The count is now up to five, good gravy.)

I have always preferred to just work on one project at a time, only occasionally taking a break if I had a specific very small and quick project that needed to get done, and then going right back to the main project once finished. But I finally had to face facts and admit to myself that a) if I want to ever actually finish the Doctor Who scarf, I can't just put it in a drawer until I feel like picking it back up again, I need to keep it going, and b) if I want to get all of those blankets done in a timely manner, I needed to get started on them pretty much nowish.

So, I have come up with a solution. Monday through Friday I will work on baby blankets. Saturday and Sunday I will work on the scarf. I put this plan into action a week ago, and so far I am pretty pleased with the results. This past weekend I made some decent progress on my scarf:

Doctor Who scarf as of March 17, 2011.

I felt much less pressure while working on it this weekend and once more found myself actually enjoying the project. Excellent. Goal achieved, huzzah! I have come to terms that this is a project that will get done when it gets done, and I am okay with that. Besides, it is starting to get warm here anyway, I won't need it until October at least.

I also have been plowing along with Baby Blanket Alpha:

Baby Blanket Alpha as of March 15, 2011.

This photo was taken Tuesday night, so I have actually made a bit more progress than what you see. It is about a third of the way done after less than a week of work. This bodes well for baby blankets!

Speaking of finished knitting projects, that hat I mentioned earlier is indeed the Jayne hat that I took with me to Seattle to work on. I started it on the plane on Friday morning and finished it as we were leaving the airport Monday night. I worked on it in between panels on Saturday and while waiting in line for our photo op on Sunday (causing me to now really want a couple of these). I am pleased as punch with how it came out, even though the entire time I was making it I worried that it would be too small. But it actually fits just right!

Jayne Hat by Cori 2011.

Pattern: Jayne by Heather Hill (inspired by Joss Whedon's Firefly)
Yarn: Lamb's Pride Bulky by Brown Sheep in Autumn Harvest, Sunburst Gold, and Rust
Needles: Size 10.5 (US) Circular and DPN

Modeled by moi.

Note: Jayne hat also looks good on mini-Browncoats.

So, I have already been discovering the necessity, benefit, and possibility of multitasking in the crafting aspects of my life. If you had asked me a week ago I would have told you that was more than enough, thank you very much. I have enough going on in general without doubling up in each different area.

Then Leigh Butler announced that as of tomorrow she will be starting a new series of posts for Tor's website. I have long enjoyed her Wheel of Time re-read posts, and she has captured my interest with her writing style and turn of phrase. Tor is apparently pretty pleased with her as well, because they asked her if, in addition to her weekly Wheel of Time posts, she would be interested in doing a series of re-read posts for George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series.

Here's the thing though: Leigh has never read the series. Not because she didn't want to, but because her devotion to Wheel of Time has sucked up enough of her time and energy that she didn't want to dive into another vastly epic and intricate series that is sort of taking its time to get finished. It's a testament to Martin's writing that fans are so vociferously annoyed at waiting for the next book in the series (which finally has a hard set release date for this summer), though it would be nice if they would go about expressing their desires in a more polite way. But I digress. The point is, Leigh decided she would be willing to give it ago, though instead of a re-read series, her posts will actually be a read-through. Two chapters a week.

Now I, like Leigh, have also had this series on my radar for quite some time. I too have hesitated to jump into it, though unlike Leigh this was because I already have enough other books to be reading that I don't need to jump into yet another big long addictive series (sadly, even though I have been reading at a pretty steady pace this year, my book pile has still only grown larger since last I showed you a picture). But. Two chapters a week? That really is not an unreasonable task. I read way more than that even on my slowest reading weeks.

So, I have finally, at long last, broke my hard and fast rule about reading more than one book at a time. Going forward, in addition to my regularly scheduled reading pile reading, I will also be reading A Game of Thrones (the first book in the series) along with Leigh. If I enjoy it enough, then I will pick up the next book when I am done.

My copy came Tuesday morning and I read through the prologue and first chapter that day. Can I just say, I really kind of want a direwolf now.

This also has the added bonus of ending up saving me about forty-five bucks (well, thirty six if you subtract the cost of the book) next month. I was planning to subscribe to HBO's forthcoming television show based on the series on iTunes (we haven't had any of the premium movie channels since I stopped working for the cable company and I refuse to add any just for one series). But since the first season is supposed to roughly cover the first book, I don't want to watch until I have read the first (and maybe the second as well) book completely through. So, I will probably just end up watching it on Netflix instead once I've finished my reading. Huzzah!

As a second added bonus, I won't be tempted to read the comments section on Leigh's posts (something that can suck up a great deal of time and often make me quite irritated at other people and the world in general). Since most people who will be reading her posts will have already read the entire series so far, she hasn't forbidden spoilers in the comments. So in order to avoid the risk of finding out something I don't want to know until I read it, I will just know to stay away. Excellent.

Hmm, maybe this multitasking thing is gonna work out for me after all.

Wrapping It Up

Despite a few bumps in the road, I feel like I've gotten a decent bit done this week. I started it out with two goals (partly because I like to set goals and partly to give me something to focus on other than the fact that my husband has been out of town and won't be back until Monday). They were:

1. Finish the crochet project I was working on.
2. Finish playing Kingdom Hearts II

I finished the jacket Wednesday evening, and must say I am extremely pleased with the results.

Cotton Jacket by Cori 2011.

Pattern: Essential Jacket by Lion Brand (Size Large)
Yarn: Lion Brand Cotton Ease in Violet (6 Skeins)
Hook: I

The pattern was pretty easy, actually. It is all half-double crochet with raglan shaping on the back and front pieces as well as the sleeves. I could see myself making this again, possibly for a gift if I decide I love someone that much. My only real beef with it at all is that I would have preferred the pattern to be a little bit more spelled out in a few places. Mostly for the two front pieces--we are given the pattern for one half of the front and at one point told to "continue as for the back," but it was a little unclear to me exactly which stitch pattern I should be following there, I would have liked more explicit steps for that bit. Also, for the other half, the pattern just says to "make another just like the first but reverse the shaping." That was easy enough, but only if I was paying attention. I could see where it would be very possible to just be working along and not realize you've made two identical pieces in error, rather than mirror images. But it all came out right in the end, so I am not complaining too much.

Yesterday, I started my Doctor Who scarf. My first knitting project, the slippers, helped me work on the challenge of using two strands at once, as well as changing up the stitches throughout the pattern for design and shaping purposes.  This scarf will give me a chance to practice changing colors. I have already completed my first color stripe (it was a very short one) and changed colors once. It was a little tricky (mostly because I had a toddler crawling all over me trying to alternately steal my yarn and needles) but seems to have turned out well. This will be a long-haul project (it is a dang long scarf), I fear, but very very good practice. As an added bonus, when I cast on and started knitting, I actually remembered how to do both and didn't have to look at my reference book until it was time to change colors, huzzah!

As for my second goal of the week. Well, as it stands now, I have just gotten to the last save point before the final battle. I am pretty confident that I can finish the game today. So that's on track.

In fact, realizing how well I am doing on my self-set goals, I decided yesterday to add a third.

3. Finish reading Good Omens.

Depending on how long it takes me to finish my game, I might actually be able to pull this one off tonight, since I am just rolling into the big climax of the book. Worst case scenario, I finish it tomorrow. Either way, I am a happy Cori.

All in all, I'd say I did good this week. I even took my daughter to the park yesterday to play for a bit with a friend (the weather has gotten gorgeous again), and today after music class, we are going to pay a brief visit at the zoo. My mother-in-law is coming out to do that with us, so I am looking forward to getting to visit with her as well as with my penguins and Komodo dragons.

While I head off to do that, why don't you check out this week's installment of Gronk? It is, as always, awesome-sauce. Katie is back next Friday (yay!) and will have a full week of guest strips leading up to her return, so that's pretty spiffy. Enjoy! Happy weekend!