MOVING...MOVED!

 

I'M MOVING ON OUT!

No, no waterworks. It's not that kind of move.

 

But I am switching blogs and won't be actively updating (or updating at all) here.

If you want to continue to follow my journey to publication, hit me up HERE as author me (a.k.a. Marna Reed) makes her debut!

 

Seriously though, do I need to pass the tissues?

 

Bye for now Blogger! ♥
xoxo Muah!

RSS Winter Writing Fes 2016 Update #1: When a new year brings new challenges...

RSS Winter Writing Festival 2016

UPDATE #1

 

 

I almost forgot to do this post.

Not surprisingly considering this is my 1st update for 2016.

 

YAY 2016! Here's to a year of major productivity boost.

 

 

I'm not doing any (formal) book reviews this year, so the blog's going to be quiet for the next few months.

 

Right now, and the reason I'm doing this blog, is I've taken up a challenge!

That challenge is the Winter Writing Festival (2016 edition) hosted by the Ruby Slippered Sisterhood, a blog about books, from authors to readers and other writers/authors. It was originally created by a group of 2009 Golden Heart Finalists, so naturally the blog is focused on romance novels/novellas/shorts.

 

What is the festival about? (Hint: it's writing-related)

 

You know, forget it, I'll just tell you.

 

It's actually an open challenge for anything writing-related. So you could be starting the first draft of your 1st novel or fiftieth, in the middle of the copyedits for your publisher, or slogging through the initial plotting/outlining stage(s): The RSS Winter Writing Fes is for you to set a goal/goals publically, have a (friendly and super supportive!) community of published and aspiring authors cheering you on and holding you to your goal(s), and enjoying the activities interspersed throughout the 50-day challenge.

 

The challenge started January 12th and will end March 1st, with updates happening every Monday until then (here's the first week of updates).

 

I found the Writing Festival last Saturday, chickened out of signing -- and then decided that was stupid and signed up the next day, making a public goal of writing 1000/day and write daily.

 

First the writing daily helps me. Writing, like most skills, is more skill development than latent talent. Even being born a wordsmith requires you polish your natural linguistic ability. Not even a genius writer can dream up a novel in a night. Hard work is the backbone of ALL stories, and most things in general.

 

As for the 1000/day, I know I can do that much now. I've got my writing groove back; the one I lost over the end of summer through fall. What with SAD to worry about and Blue Monday recently passing I think I'm over the hump of my slump (hehe) and into greener pastures...well, actually I'm still staring at snow and slush and will be for another, oh, 3ish months, but that's not the point --

 

 

No. No, I know you probably fell asleep so here's the...

 

TL;DR version: I joined THIS writing challenge and for the remaining 37 days until March 1st, my goals are,

 

1) to write 1000/day (of whatever WIP I'm working on)

2) write daily from January 15th to March 1st (and I'm on track so far!)

 

I'll be doing my own updates every Saturday, since I started late and I'll have my own experiences to share from this 1.5 month-long challenge.

 

Until next time! ♥

 



Good Endings make Better Beginnings. (Big Dreams Blog Update #27)

YEAR-END UPDATE DAY!

Thanks to Shah Wharton for the banner above.

I’m pretty sure I say this every year (like I do almost every Update post), but 2015 raced by. I can’t believe a year’s come and gone from my last New Years’ Update. Ahh. The time. Where you go?

*ahem*

So let’s review some of my year’s goals.

I actually have no problem with New Years’ resolutions. Some people mock them, other people revere them, I probably fell in the former category a few years back and since I started this blog, I began leaning towards the latter opinion of reverence. Heck! Last year I set these (favourite) New Years’ resolutions:

1) Eat healthier and exercise more.

2) Find a job (*cough*thatIlike*hack*)

3) Write two more novels and send them to agents or directly to publishers.

For me the same old goals I recycled (maybe tweaked) since 2014.

Sitting here mentally reviewing 2015 and writing this post has made me consider that resolutions are fine and dandy…when coupled with a goal plan.

It’s easy to say that this is the year that you’re going to cut down on chocolate, open a business and roll in the profit and quit the day job, and so on. It’s harder to put that ‘bigger’ plan to action.

So my broader goal in 2015 is to outline an action plan for each of my goals (even the small ones). How will I be doing this? By continuing my monthly Update reviews, and within those Updates setting smaller goals towards the bigger goals.

For example, one of my goals for 2015 is to renew my writing goals from 2015. This year, in particular, I wanted to write one sentence daily. That didn't happen. In fact that one-sentence goal was re-constructed from another failed goal of 750 words/daily. It's all here if you want to read about it. Instead of aiming for writing daily, I know that all my finished projects usually require me to focus and write on the project daily.

So if I can do that much, then great. Otherwise it's taken me two years to get to this point, but I now accept that I won't be writing daily. And you know what? That's just fine.

As long as I set my resolutions, have my mini action plans for each and I use this blog to keep myself accountable then I see a productive new year.

My resolutions for 2016 include:

✿ WRITING: this year I won't be setting a calendar of projects, instead I'd like to complete projects as per priority and take it a day at a time from there. For instance I'm opening the new year with a short story I have plans for but I can't speak about yet.

✿ READING + REVIEWING: I surpassed my goal of reading + reviewing 52-53 books for 2015. I actually read a little more than 100, but I didn't review some of those novellas. I reviewed only 100 and I'm all the better for those 100 and some reads.

Now I know this blog is called "Read, Review, and Rinse" and I started 2014 with book reviews, but I'll be stopping that this year. Why? I never really enjoyed reviewing books. It was an experience I'll cherish, not one I want to re-hash anymore. Maybe I'll feel differently after the next 366 days... We'll have to see. In the meantime, I will renew my reading goal of 52-53 books for 2016 and will continue to update my reading list -- I just won't be reviewing those books.

✿ MISC.: this is where my health and financial plans go. Health-wise I didn't really appreciate my body and my spirit all that much this year.

I was mostly equally depressed as I was happy, and some days I felt like I was tiptoeing around my mood to ensure my productivity for the day. 'Cause I don't know about anyone else, I just can't do anything when I'm all weepy and pissy. I also tend to binge-eat sweets when I'm sad, so I'd like to replace sugary treats with more fruits. I won't be doing baking reviews anymore. That was a trial for this year and I didn't like reviewing as much as I liked baking, so I'll keep up the baking just toss out the reviews. And I'll be searching for healthier desserts and whenever I find one I like, I'll share it real quick on here (or maybe Twitter or something). Fair?

Financial stuff is my business, but I'm hoping to turn around my finances this year. Pay off more student loans, and learn to budget better. I'll probably do the latter by visiting the library and reading up on how-tos and all that. You learn by doing, right?

Now that I listed my resolutions/bigger goals, I would go through each and break down my goals and they'd look something like this:

✿ WRITING: complete short story and edit short story; I'll see what comes after that but I've got an idea for another project I'm co-authoring so that's probably what will come next

✿ (JUST) READING: read 1 book/week and I already have my first two books lined up for the new year

✿ MISC.: continue exercising (I exercise every other day for 30 mins at least, and I tend to break out into dance throughout the day anyways, so more exercise); keep a food journal -- this will be within my art journal (<-- more on both these in January); try to keep spending down to a minimum (I still live with the 'rents and they're cool with it, but I'd like to start to pitch in with the bills more) -- I'm looking into some jobs, and hopefully I can talk about my progress in the first quarter of 2016).

Really vague, I know, but it's enough to expand from resolutions to actual do-able goals. Next up, I need that accountability. Some people don't, and that's cool, but I know that if I don't feel like I'm looking over my shoulder just a bit that I'll start to slack off. And that's where the Do You Have a Goal? blog hop has come in for a bit more than 2 years now.

If I didn't know that there were 11 other bloggers out there trying to achieve their goals

Created by authors Misha Gericke and Beth Fred, the Do You Have a Goal? hoppity hop invites you to set one (preferably big and crazy) goal to reach by July 2018 (five years after the blog hop's beginning).

My goal is 1 million words in completed stories because the 1 million and first word is supposed to be my first good word -- all lies, I just like "fullness" of 1 million. Whatever that means. But I am closing the year off with 192K (going down from ~250K because I haven't read some of those finished manuscripts, and once I do I'll add them to the count).

As a member of the blog, every month I do an Update post recounting my goals from the previous month. Where am I at? What did I do for the past ~4 weeks? What are my goals for the coming month?

Like I said, AMAH-ZING for folks like me who are shaky with time management.

Interested in the blog? Click the icon up at the top of this post, or right HERE or Uncle Sam to join in the fun now.

All in all, 2016 will be about upward change. Improving, stumbling along the way but remembering what worked and didn't work to ensure I don't keep falling flat on my face by repeating poor, old habits.

The reason I chose an English proverb* for this blog's title is to show how a New Year doesn't have to start at January 1st 12:00 AM; beginnings can start whenever, and there's always room to change, adapt and grow. Just make sure to have fun while you're doing all that. 

Here's to a healthy, happy and successful year.

Cheers!

*actual English proverb: "A good beginning makes a good ending."

BOOK REVIEW (100): A Home in the Sky (Twice Told Tales #6)

BOOK REVIEW:

A Home in the Sky

Like its predecessors in the Twice Told series from author Olivia Snowe (and illustrator Michelle Lamoreaux), I read A Home in the Sky in one sitting yesterday. This book, like the others, sticks very close to the fairy tale it is re-telling: in this case, "Jack and the Beanstalk".

Jack is a teenager in this re-telling, and like his peers he wants items of materialistic value. He's raised by his mom alone in a crappy neighborhood housing thugs and thieves and he's a smart kid who wants to climb his way out of his dead-end, poor stick at life, and he wants to take his mom with him.

So Jack, being a good boy, listens to mom and sells his awesome, super-fast bike to a creepy old man in a city alley in exchange for six magical beans. Mom freaks out and sends Jack back to get his bike and fetch it for real money to help catch up with all the overdue bills.

If you haven't figured it out, this story is set in the 21st-century, though it gets pretty weird and I felt at time caught in a fairy tale parallel to a 21st century city setting, if you catch my drift.

Anyways, Jack tosses the beans when he can't find the old man who "stole" his bike and the next day he happens across the empty lot he tossed the beans in and BAM! there's a beanstalk where his beans were overnight.

Jack does the most natural thing: climb that stalk and find out where it goes.
And you know how the story ends.



Well, nothing changes. Relatively nothing. Which, honestly given the nature of this tale, I was hoping something would give. When you take this story and drop it in modern times, it just DOESN'T work. I mean, the magic harp, the hen laying gold eggs, the giant, were just all terrible facades rather than charming outside a more fantastical setting.

Jack's mother is an idiot. I mean, she was pretty annoying in the original tale (or versions of the tale), but at least her greed made sense. It's like by trying to redeem her in this story -- put her in a better light -- Ms. Snowe failed to acknowledge how the plot turned out. Why would Jack's mother willingly go to a thug she knows is "a crook and a killer"?

And what's with the ending. It felt TOO perfect, even for a fairy tale.
I'll give it a one and a half because I liked the art as usual. Ms. Lamoreaux is really talented!

My verdict:

✮.5

(stars)

BAKING REVIEW (12): Gingerbread Cookies

BAKING REVIEW:

Ginger Cookies

 

 Lately I've been obsessing over Ever After High, and I couldn't help including this guy, Coach Gingerbread, from the cartoon series.
Haha, I can't imagine anyone taking a bite out of him -- would he taste like a sweaty gingerbread man? :D

As the year went by, I'm sure my baking reviews are getting more vague. In this case, I completely forgot to bookmark the site where I riffed the recipe for the gingerbread cookies and the icing. Lol.

So no comparisons from the site, but here's some pictures of gingerbread cookies around the net that make me envy my lacking decorating skills.

And here's mine straight from the oven:

When it's frosted:

 

It wasn't planning to share the frosted version, but *shrugs* why not?
I'm of the mind that if it tastes good, and looks somewhat appetizing, then I've done my job.

These are delicious, and as such I'm going to keep this review short.My only qualm was that it could have been more moist, but that doesn't make sense because we're talking gingerbread cookies.

What I liked especially was that there wasn't too much sugar -- other than 3/4 cup light brown sugar -- in the cookies because the icing could be sweet, and even a little too sweet...

In the end, this was a great way to end my baking review career. Haha. I can't replicate this, and I don't want to in 2016. Then again if I find that extra special dessert, I'd be happy to share. Until then...

EAT ON.



My verdict:

❤❤❤❤.5

(4.5 hearts)

BOOK REVIEW (99): Haunted Memories (Saranormal #2)

BOOK REVIEW:

Haunted Memories

Since I sort of left the first Saranormal book with high hopes for the series, I decided to grab book 2 and join Sara and see what new ghostly adventures she’s unearthed. Book 2, Haunted Memories, follows 12-year-old medium Sara Collins to junior high in her new port-side town, Stellamar.

Sara is not too excited to be at school because 1) she’s not really social and as the new girl, she’s on display, and 2) there are a lot of ghosts popping up around the school halls and the cafeteria which makes her plan to act normal kaput.

There’s a bit of plot carry over from the first book, but I think it’s still safe to jump into this one without being too lost.

Book 2 like Book 1 doesn’t have a lot of ghost showdowns. The ghosts so far are benign: if you’ve ever stumbled upon the Ghost Whisperer series with Jennifer Love Hewitt then you’ll see what I mean. There are the Ghost Whisperer episodes were you have the ‘ghost-of-the-day’ and they’re usually ghosts who are stuck because of some problem they need to solve, so on, so forth.

But you know why I really loved this book: Sara has a love interest!

Jayden Mendes is the new kid from last year and he's probably the only one who understands how Sara feels. It helps that he's hot and Sara's getting lovey-dovey vibes from him too. The thing is that she can't seem to escape the whole seeing-ghosts part of her and every time she's enjoying a moment with Jayden they're interrupted by the spirit of his dead older brother.

I can't promise action, but there's enough mystery to last the short read, and it helps that Sara is actually coming into her powers a bit. Oh, and she isn't sharing her secret with herself anymore! Want to know who's in on her secret, pick up Haunted Memories and find out for yourself.

My verdict:

✮✮✮✮

(4 stars)

BOOK REVIEW (98): Fairest of All (Whatever After #1)

BOOK REVIEW:

Fairest of All

I really enjoyed the first book in author Sarah Mlynowski's Whatever After series. If you haven't guessed by the cover, the series re-tells some favourite fairy tales. This first book takes another look at "Snow White" and borrows elements from the Disney version, and a few local versions (i.e. poisoned apple, poisoned comb, poisoned pillow).

Whatever After #1, Fairest of All, follows 10-year-old Abby and her 7-year-old brother Jonah into a magic mirror in their basement. From the mirror they land in the fairy tale kingdom of Zamel. Currently ruled by Snow White's evil stepmother, Abby and Jonah realize they need to get home and fast before they are permanently stuck in the technology-free kingdom.

Snow White was annoyingly ditzy, and though she's sixteen, it felt that Abby and Jonah could take care of her better than she could herself. I should go easy on her though. She was orphaned at a young age and she has a (funny) evil stepmother. The evil stepmother was more funny than scary: she was a bit of a loon, and her plans to poison Snow were laughable. At least I could admire her tenacity... *sigh* The dwarfs were useless for the most part, although they offered a bit of comic relief and they happened to be a big part of the climax.

Of course no "Snow White" re-telling is complete without an appearance from the Prince.

Prince Trevor from the neighbouring kingdom of Gamel is AWOL until about halfway through the book when Abby (or was it Jonah?) remembers the Prince's role in the fairy tale. In the end Trevor is about as useless as the dwarfs (if not even more useless as he saves NO ONE), but the dude's nice and though he seems a bit eager to marry Snow, he isn't put out when she tells him to take things slowly:

"Listen, Trevor," Snow says. "I'm not looking for a serious relationship right now. I need to focus on my duties here, now that I'm queen."

"I get it," the prince says, nodding. "Look, why don't we take it a little slower? How about dinner?" (pg. 156)

And that, ladies and gents, is how fairy tales should be written.

Other than the endearing twists to this tale, the reason I really loved this re-telling and continued reading was to follow the relationship of Abby and Jonah. These two were hilarious! I could believe they were brother and sister. I'm so glad that each of the stories will feature these two together, otherwise Abby would come across too bossy and Jonah would be 'act first, think later'. Like all good teammates (and siblings!) they share weaknesses and strengths.

If you're at all interested, try this first adventure with Abby and Jonah.

My verdict:

✮✮✮✮✮

(5 stars)