Tag Archives: fiction

Quick Review: Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister

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I just finished Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister by Gregory Maguire, and I enjoyed it a lot!

Personally, I am a big fan of new or different takes on traditional fairy tales, and so this take on Cinderella appealed to me. It is almost historical fiction as much as it is a fairy tale, set in Holland during the 1600s, during the early parts of the tulip craze. I felt that the story moved along at a good pace (although I was occasionally confused as to how much in-story time had actually passed), and I was definitely able to immerse myself in the world. There were some unexpected twists as well, especially at the end.

Does anyone have other recommendations for good fairy-tale retellings? I am a fan of Mercedes Lackey’s Elemental Masters series, and I know that I read some others when I was younger, but don’t recall them too well now.

A Personal History of Books: 16 Years of Reading

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A Personal History of Books: 16 Years of Reading

As my second post of 2017 (although it’s coming a bit later than I intended), I thought I would talk about my New-Books-Read list.

Back in 2000, somewhat on a whim, I decided to start keeping a list of the new books that I read that year in this small, cheerfully-psychedelic Lisa Frank notepad:

booklist

(I can hear you all crying “Oh god, the nineties!” and shielding your eyes.)

The list is just titles, no author names or any other information. My only criteria for adding things were that it had to be an actual book of some sort or another, that I had not read it before (I am an inveterate re-reader of books, sometimes, so I decided not to count those), and that I read all of it. At the end of that first year, I counted up how many titles were on the list (109!), and then flipped the page over to make a “New Books Read Since January 1, 2001,” and continued on.

booklist2000

I kept this up for the next 16 years. At the end of 2016, I finally reached the last page of the notebook.

booklist2016

(As you can see, my handwriting has not notably improved. Be glad that you get to read only typed things from me, my handwritten fiction drafts are awful. XD)

Looking through it since then, I ran a few numbers just for kicks:

-694 new books in 16 years

-Average of 43.375 books per year

-Best year: 2000 (109)

-Worst year: 2007 (13)

For those interested, the 2000 list includes all of both the Dragonriders of Pern series (Anne McCaffrey) and all of the Lord Peter Wimsey series (Dorothy Sayers), among other things. I was prone in middle and high school to spending my summer vacations discovering a new series of books (or two) and then devouring them all in one steady go. (I really miss being able to do that sometimes.) After 2007, I vowed to never read fewer than 15 new books per year again, and so far I’ve managed to hold to that. (To be fair, 2007 was in the middle of college, and I was pretty swamped with work, but still.)

So, the psychedelic 90s teddy bear will now be retired to a shelf, and I have a plainer (less eye-smarting) little purple notebook in which to continue these annual lists. This one has more pages than the previous one, so it will probably take me longer than 16 years to fill it up (unless I get back to reading 100+ new books every year!) Hopefully, I’ll be able to make a post about that one when I finish it too. 🙂

Happy Reading, everyone!

~Ethelinda

Rough drafts

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As I’m working on book one of the Epic Fantasy Series, I’m trying out the concept of a really rough draft: leaving out names of places and people if I haven’t figured out what they are yet, writing notes to myself as reminders, and just throwing in mini-outlines at certain points if I don’t quite know what’s going to happen in a particular scene yet. This is a different method for a first draft than I’ve tried before, and it’s quite freeing! Rather than get hung up on the details at this stage, I can let the story flow for now, with the reassurance that I’ll go back later and fill in/fix up the things that I’m passing over at the moment.

It does leave me with some (to me, at least) semi-humorous bits here and there, such as:

“…and targeted at the ears of the horses. [is this even a thing? Are horse ears sensitive? As per that one tumblr post, seems like yes, but should look into this]…”

And:

“-C very emotional about losing drum

-they feed him, get him settled for the night?? What time of day even is it.”

(I think it’s late afternoon, actually, but I’ll work it out for sure later. XD)

~Ethelinda

Draft 4 done!

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Drafts three and four of The Wizard of Suomen are finished!

Draft three was a line-edit on paper, because it’s easier for me to catch some mistakes that way. I got that done and the edits transferred back to my electronic copy at 12:31AM on February 7, 2016, with the story at 157,594 words, 329 pages in Word.

I finished the fourth draft two nights ago, at 11:00PM on July 26, 2016. As of now, the story stands at 157,228 words, 328 pages in Word.

And, as of Wednesday, I have sent it to my editor! I will be working with Gina Hilse of Facets Fiction Editing. I won’t be doing any further work on it until I get her feedback. Undoubtedly there is still a lot of room for improvement, but I’m looking forward to putting the best possible version of this story out there as a finished product!

In the meantime, I’m going to do some planning on bigger projects, and hopefully get some other short things written (though given my current pace, I make no specific promises. >.>)

~Ethelinda

im/mortal: Grace

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The offering house was old, and disrepair would have been a kind word to describe its current state.

Like everyone in town, Aiolos had always avoided the place. It was the offering house of a dark god, though its name was long since forgotten. It was whispered that it was the same god still worshipped by the yela, but the blood-drinking race hadn’t been present on this world for a long time. Something had changed, something had brought about the downfall of their old tyrannical rule, although they were unfortunately not gone altogether from the universe. Whispers claimed that they had restyled themselves under a new name and were no longer a threat to daylight people.

Rumor aside, there was no direct proof that the yela were any better now than in the past, but they were gone. That was good enough for most people, but few were inclined to worship any gods associated with the yela, even now.

Aiolos knew only a little of that history, and didn’t care in the slightest. The only thing he cared about, looking at the rotting wood set on a crumbling stone foundation, was getting in to accomplish his purpose. Continue reading →

The Long-Overdue Update

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Last August, my grandfather passed away. He had been ill with cancer for some months, but had not told anyone about it, and so by the time it became bad enough that he had to go to the hospital, he had very little time left. He was not in too much pain, and did not suffer for long, which I am very grateful for. He was my last remaining grandparent, and the one that I had been closest to; I was fortunate enough to live with him for six months following my undergrad graduation, doing an internship in the town where he lived. His loss has been very difficult for me, and even now I still struggle with it at times. For a few months immediately afterwards, I did not really feel much like writing or even editing, which is partly why it took me so long to get back to work on TWoS.

On a more positive front, I had more hours at work during the second half of last year, and as of the beginning of 2016, am full-time and even got a small raise. Since I really love my job, this is very exciting! It also allowed me to finally get my own place again (I had been staying with family since the beginning of 2014), but the moving/unpacking process then took up much of November and December, and some time in January. In addition to my full 40-hour week, this hasn’t always left me with a lot of time to write.

So, I have not been nearly as active with my writing over the past several months as I would have liked. I have at least been working on the latest edit of TWoS for the past couple months, which will be the last one before I send it to my editor. Once I have a final draft that I am satisfied with, I’ll be looking more into the self-publishing process (which I’ve put off because I didn’t want to let that research distract me from actually getting the story written!). Depending on how that process goes, and my time/money situation, I would like to have TWoS officially published sometime before the end of 2016.

I do have one more short story in my im/mortal series written, and another in the works. Some other snippets may be forthcoming as well, and I am going to start some planning and drafting of my next larger project once I’m a bit more settled on the TWoS draft.

Thank you again to anyone who has given me support or enjoyed my writing thus far, and know that more is coming. Hopefully soon!

~Ethelinda

Review: The Martian

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(“A book a friend recommended” from the Reading Challenge)

I put this on my Reading Challenge list on the recommendation of a friend, and then ended up reading it for a book club that I’m part of with a few other friends – we definitely did not regret it. I’m probably a little late to the party on this particular book, but in case you haven’t heard about it or given it a try yet, The Martian is excellent. (Spoilers below.)

Continue reading →

TWoS Fun Fact #7

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Birds are very important to the Suomilen people, who see them as being blessed by the Winds. They are not tamed or kept as pets, since to cage one is a grave sin. However, it is quite common in Suomen to plant trees or build perches and houses for birds, and to leave out food and water for them.

The Suomilen people rank different kinds of birds into a hierarchy of sorts, with ground birds that can only fly a little bit (such as pheasant or grouse) as Lesser Birds. If it is considered acceptable to hunt and eat any birds, it is the Lesser Birds, and some in Suomen would still consider that a sin. On the other end of the hierarchy are the Great Birds. These are any species that show a true “mastery” of flight (master of the Winds and air), usually meaning great maneuverability and/or the ability to soar through the sky for extended periods of time. The Great Birds include all of the raptor species, as well as gulls and swallows.

~Ethelinda