November 2022 Monthly Update (Patreon)

You might have seen it on my blog, but I've officially finished my second draft of my latest novel (Working Title: The Villain's Journey). It's 112,057 words right now (the first draft wasn't even 50000). I've posted bits of it on Patreon  here.  I might post the second scene (or some other scene) to celebrate soon. While the second draft was all massive rewrites, new scenes and major plot changes, the third draft is just going to be fine detail work. Cleaning up the writing, putting in some more foreshadowing, resolving some subplots...it's well on its way. 

And after that, it's about finding beta readers and starting to craft queries- I'm going to give looking for an agent another shot. I'll give traditional publishing my best shot, but if it's been a while and I'm still striking out, I'll probably self-publish. Another small press is unfortunately not an option because I'm under contract with my current one for four more years. 

This one will also actually be a series (either a duology or trilogy)! Unless the first book doesn't do well (you know...like my last book didn't...) in which case I'll just refit what I've written of the sequel onto short stories on Patreon or something. But I'm going to start working on the sequel while I edit my third draft regardless, and have a lot of ideas for the the sequel, which is exciting! Because usually having ideas is the hardest part of writing for me. A lot of it will be kind of challenging, but I'm in a mental place where that actually excites me.

Anyway, enough about that. What am I reading? A lot, as usual! 

I kind of speedread A Good Girls Guide to Murder during breaks at work, and it was fine but I couldn't suspend my disbelief about her getting to investigate a murder as her senior capstone project for high school (and committing a bunch of crimes to do so and then writing them down as part of her report? What did she think would happen with that? And then she was supposed to get an A at the end?). It was complete unnecessary to the plot too, she could have just been investigating the murder because she wanted to and it wouldn't have changed anything. Now I'm read Neil Gaiman's Norse Mythology for my light work read, MUCH more believable.

I also read Light from Uncommon Stars which I wish I'd liked more than I did- it has an interesting concept, a woman who is selling her violin students souls to the devil takes in a trans runaway, but also she's having a romance with an alien woman who runs the donut shop who is having trouble with her family, oh but ALSO ALSO let's go into the family drama the violin maker is dealing with... It just felt like there were too many plotlines that didn't have time to fully develop. The plotline between the alien and her son was handled especially badly, he was angry after being displaced due to an intergalactic war and his mom does...absolutely nothing to help him. She actually wipes his mind at one point. It had a lot of heart in other places, though, so I gave it a high rating.

Currently reading the last book in the Scholomance series on tape! Right now I'm alternating between listening to American Gods and Children of Blood and Bone 'on tape' 

And I'd never say this to the broader internet because it's an unneeded opinion...don't leak this... but...I know the author has said she was inspired by ATLA but I wasn't expecting it to be SO heavily inspired to the point of being distracting. Like, a group of traveling kids with a giant animal are being pursued by an angry prince who is also sad because he has a mean dad, and they have to do something involving the solstice, also the main character is the last of her kind of magic users, still grieving the loss of her mother who was killed, also she has a non-magical older brother (he could have stood to be a little more Sokka actually, I wish he was funny) who travels with her. Three guesses who her love interest is going to be btw!! I honestly admire going this far to make Zutara canon (unfortunately I think this romance works even less than Zutara would have). Oh and also at one point there's a order of peaceful magical people who were totally wiped out and it was against their religion so they couldn't use their magic to fight back.

I know Avatar didn't invent any of these things, but so many of them is still distracting. It's still entertaining (and fast paced enough it makes a good workout listen) also does it's own thing and uses Nigerian mythology as a basis, which is cool to learn about, but man. I'm incredibly curious if Inan is going to straight up do Zuko's arc where thinks about going good, but then betrays everyone, but then really goes good. 

For manga, I recently read She Loves to Cook, She Loves to Eat. I'm not usually a big foodie manga person, but it was a cute yuri romance! I appreciated how grounded it was, with the women casually mentioning things like the injustice of not being paid the same of their male counterparts in a way that felt real.

Spotify Wrapped is out. Don't want to share the whole thing to the world at large but for you, here:

Here 

The top five are really 'the songs Spotify shuffled to the most on my playlist for my book' since I spent so much time listening to that. Really skewing the results! 

Anime watching is still the same, also I made my book characters in the Sims 4. Still hyped to go to England! Monthly update might be late next time thanks to that trip.