Category Archives: Fiction

Any posts containing actual stories or parts/chapters of stories.

2015-2018 Reading Challenge

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(Because it’s highly unlikely that I’ll get through all of these this year.[ETA:Or in two years, apparently. >.>] OR EVEN THREE I should probably just call it 2019 at this point, but whatever. I am determined to do this regardless of the timeline.) Here’s my list of books to read for the Reading Challenge. Almost all books that I haven’t read before, with a mix of some that were already on my “to read” list and some that I had never heard of before I looked them up. Will cross them off as I finish them, and I’ll also try and write up a bit of a review for each one.

A book with more than 500 pages: Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurty

A classic romance: Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

A book that became a movie: Shogun by James Clavell

A book published this year: Shadow Scale by Rachel Hartman (Review here)

A book with a number in the title: Life of Pi by Yann Martel

A book written by someone under 30: Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

A book with nonhuman characters: The Orc of Many Questions by Shane Michael Murray

A funny book: Next of Kin by Eric Frank Russell (Going to cheat a little bit on this one because I really want to reread it.)

A book by a female author: Conjured by Sarah Beth Durst

A mystery or thriller: Living Proof by Kira Peikoff

A book with a one-word title: Runemarks by Joanne Harris

A book of short stories: Fragile Things by Neil Gaiman

A book set in a different country: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

A nonfiction book: Your Inner Fish by Neil Shubin (Review here)

A popular author’s first book: Jonah’s Gourd Vine by Zora Neale Hurston

A book from an author you love that you haven’t read yet: League of Dragons by Naomi Novik

A book a friend recommended: The Martian by Andy Weir (Review here)

A Pulitzer Prize-winning book: The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara

A book based on a true story: Chinese Cinderella by Adeline Yen Mah

A book at the bottom of your to-read list: Prudence by Gail Carriger

A book your mom loves: Hard Magic by Larry Correia

A book that scares you: The Greenland Diaries: Days 1-100 by Patrick W. Marsh (Review here)

A book more than 100 years old: The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

A book based entirely on its cover: The Archived by Victoria Schwab

A book you were supposed to read in school but didn’t: The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

A memoir: Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali

A book you can finish in a day: Viscountess by Taversia

A book with antonyms in the title: Bittersweet by Nevada Barr

A book set somewhere you’ve always wanted to visit: The Bonesetter’s Daughter by Amy Tan

A book that came out the year you were born: The Vampire Lestat by Anne Rice

A book with bad reviews: Unwrapped Sky by Rjurik Davidson (Review here)

A trilogy: The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

A book from your childhood: Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder (Also cheating a little on this one, because it’s high time I reread these.)

A book with a love triangle: Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo

A book set in the future: Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

A book set in high school: The Princess Diaries by Meg Cabot

A book with a color in the title: The Last Kashmiri Rose by Barbara Cleverly

A book that made you cry: A Frozen Hell: The Russo-Finnish Winter War of 1939-40 by William R. Trotter

A book with magic: The Sword-Edged Blonde by Alex Bledsoe

A graphic novel: Princess Retribution by Elaine Tipping (Review here)

A book by an author you’ve never read before: The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley

A book you own but have never read: Emma by Jane Austen

A book that takes place in your hometown: Undead and Unwed by MaryJanice Davidson

A book that was originally written in a different language: The Kalevala

A book set during Christmas: Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

A book written by an author with your same initials: Is Sex Necessary? or Why You Feel the Way You Do by E. B. White and James Thurber

A play: Inherit the Wind by Jerome Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee

A banned book: The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie

A book based on or turned into a TV show: Outlander by Diana Gabaldon

A book you started but never finished: We the Living by Ayn Rand

TWoS Fun Fact #2

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The planet that Suomen is a part of has a slightly shorter orbit around its sun than Earth around our Sun, making their year about 355 days long. The Suomilen people divide this up into eleven months of 32 days each, with a “leap year” every fourth year adding a day to the first month.

(Yes, I spent time figuring this out. Because I could. More fiction soon.)

~Ethelinda

TWoS Progress Update

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Finally finished my read-through of Draft 1 of TWoS. -_- I think I’m solid on knowing the remaining major edits that are needed (at least, the ones that readers pointed out or that I can identify myself), so now it’s just a matter of doing them! Then a line-edit on paper, and then it can go to my editor. After which it will undoubtedly need many more edits, but that’s okay. 🙂

~Ethelinda

2015 Reading Challenge – Recommendations

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So, I ran across the 2015 Reading Challenge which is going around the internet, and was intrigued by the list. I got a little ways into it and realized that I was mostly putting down things that I’ve already read, so here is a list of my recommendations based on the Challenge list! (With commentary, because I can.) I’ve tried to list a mix of things, with some stuff that is hopefully new to anyone who’s looking to do the Challenge. With a few necessary exceptions, the following books are ones that I, a) have read, and b) do actually recommend (I’ve stated if that’s not the case).

I plan to make a separate version of the list as a challenge for myself, with things that I haven’t read yet, but I doubt I’ll worry about trying to finish them all this year.

Enjoy!

  • A book with more than 500 pages: Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

This is one of my all-time favorites, and I definitely recommend that everyone read it for themselves. Whatever you think of Rand’s philosophy, there’s a lot of encouragement in her works for you to take a look at your own life and what you’d really like to get out of it, which I’ve always found very uplifting.

  • A classic romance: Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

When I started this, I wasn’t sure if I was going to like it or not, but I ended up loving it. Good story of two people overcoming initial bad impressions and misunderstandings and discovering that they are actually quite compatible. I like that Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy are honest enough to let their opinions change as they learn more about each other.

  • A book that became a movie: The Princess Bride by William Goldman

I’ll be honest, I don’t remember the book very well (as compared to the movie), but I have no strong memory of disliking it.

  • A book published this year: Shadow Scale by Rachel Hartman

This is the sequel to Hartman’s first book, Seraphina, which I really enjoyed; one of those books where I was hooked ten pages in. Interesting take on a world where humans and dragons are in conflict with each other. I just requested this one from the library and will hopefully be able to read it shortly.

  • A book with a number in the title: Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

A classic, and definitely worth reading, though unfortunately one of those that I read once years ago and don’t remember too well now.

  • A book written by someone under 30: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

I haven’t ever gotten to the rest of the series, but I definitely enjoyed this one.

  • A book with nonhuman characters: Raptor Red by Robert Bakker

If you have the slightest interest in dinosaurs, you should read this book. Part of me would say that you should read this book even if you have no interest in dinosaurs. More seriously, it’s a dinosaur book set in the Cretaceous Period, written by a paleontologist who knows his stuff. Not only does he make the character of Raptor Red sympathetic and believable, but he paints a rich, fascinating picture of the life and environment that she would have lived in. Another of my all-time favorites.

  • A funny book: Next of Kin by Eric Frank Russell

This is one of those books that made me cry because I was laughing so hard. I recommend pretty much all of Russell’s work, but this one is top-notch. If you’re looking for humor and sci-fi, this is a good one. Continue reading →

Update – moving forward!

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So! The first draft of The Wizard of Suomen is completely posted!

Once again, I’d like to thank anyone who was reading/liking/commenting – I appreciate it. (If anyone who hasn’t commented up until now wants to leave some feedback, now is definitely a good time!)

I have been working on the second draft of TWoS for a few weeks now, and am making steady progress on that. In the interests of getting that finished up and to my editor sooner rather than later, I’m not going to make any promises about regularly posting other fiction until that second draft is done. There will be some fiction, but it will be shorter (probably some one-shot stories), and I’ll be posting more sporadically. Once I feel that TWoS is in good enough shape to give to my editor, I’ll try and be more regular about posting fiction again, probably every other week. I might go back to once a week at some point if I make enough progress on other projects.

Hopefully, I will be able to post some other things in between fiction posts! More movie and hopefully some book reviews, and maybe some more of me talking about aspects of writing or stories that I enjoy. I also might do some statistics and fun facts related to TWoS…and maybe some world-building info for Suomen will go up here as well (anyone interested in the Suomilen calender, for example?)

I’ll definitely post updates about TWoS as that progresses through the editing and (hopefully!!) publishing stages. Not much else that I can think of for now, I guess. If anyone following me has suggestions or prompts for things they’d like to see me write, I can take those under consideration! (Though I make no promises. 🙂 )

~Ethelinda

Second draft progress

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The second draft of The Wizard of Suomen is coming along!

I’ll give a fuller update after the epilogue gets posted, but I realized that I’ve been kind of quiet lately outside of actual story posts. I did some more background world-building and got those things straightened out in my head and written down, and since then I’ve been working pretty steadily on actual second-draft edits to the story. I’m most of the way through Part 1.

~Ethelinda

First draft – done!!

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Yesterday, I finished the first draft of The Wizard of Suomen.

It topped out at a little bit over 148,000 words (which is roughly 324 single-spaced pages in Microsoft Word), so my recent estimate of the final count for this first draft was fairly accurate.

I’m really, really excited about this, and I had a hard time getting to sleep afterwards because my brain was still going a mile a minute trying to process it. I’m still processing it now, I think, but I didn’t want to put off saying something about it any longer.

In terms of posting here on the website, I’m going to stick to my one-chapter-per-week schedule. This will keep things consistent with the past several months, and give me a little breathing room to begin working on the second draft, as well as hopefully building up a few more things to post after the first draft of TWoS is all up.

Once again, thank you so much to everyone who has been reading and liking/commenting. I appreciate all of the feedback that I’ve received, and I hope to have a great final version of TWoS done sometime this year. Stay tuned!

~Ethelinda

140K

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I broke 140,000 words tonight, and am well into the wrap-up of The Wizard of Suomen. I hit a slow spot for a few days, but I think the things that I needed sorted out in my head are good now, so I’m hoping to finish up the first draft within the next few weeks here. I think my tentative estimate of a 140K-150K word count in total for this first draft was fairly accurate.

Home stretch.

~Ethelinda

Happy New Year!

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(Very slightly belated.)

Here’s to 2015: I hope that it will be a year full of writing and reading!

Thanks once again to everyone who is following The Wizard of Suomen. Look for both a completed first draft and hopefully a completed final version of that this year, as well as some other projects with a bit more variety once the draft of TWoS is done and posted. 🙂

~Ethelinda