What Was I Up To During My Unannounced Four-Month Hiatus?

Two weeks ago, I awkwardly reappeared in the blogophere.

With very few excuses to offer, really. I haven't written a trilogy while I was gone. I haven't been on some kind of cleansing technology abstinence.

I'm not even super-relaxed by the whole hiatus experience.

Feel free to throw things at me but please make them chocolate or at least biscuits.

Here's what did happen during my hiatus:

–{{In April, I:

• post, apologising for disappearing for three whole weeks. Ha ha. Hahahahaa. so cute.
• volunteer at a comic-con. My plans of adding a Winter Soldier arm under my official T-shirt don't work out because I'm lazy. I get photos with a female Loki, a female Winter Soldier, a Gandalf, a Thranduil, and a Rey (who turns out to be my junior leader from a holiday outreach program last year). Gandalf gets the Runner Up: People's Choice award for doing the whole "you. shall not. PASS" thing. 
• read a lot of fanfics, including some from fandoms I'm not even in. (The Miraculous Ladybug love square is just too hilarious, okay? I must have read literally a hundred identity reveal fics.)
• watch season 2 of The Flash (leave the timeline aLONE, BARRY) and Guardians of the Galaxy 2. 
• attempt to do Camp NaNo in 'minutes of study'. I fail.
  
• [whoops]

–{{In May, I:

May: it's over?? (no it isn't, go away)

Me: (approximately half-way through May) Huh look at that. Some bloggers are doing May recaps already!
Me: I don't need to worry about that yet, obviously. Those are the serious bloggers. No one expects me to be too organised.
Me: *internets a bit more*
Me: What day is it?
Calendar: 1 June.
Me: ...
Me: liar there is no way I missed May.

Unfortunately for me, it is, in fact, June. (Winter, and the cold's arrived right on time. Help.) And, May being over, I am to inform all you lovely [organised] people how I spent my time.

So my goal was to work on Three Sisters.

HAHAHAHA.

I wrote 500 words one day - when I couldn't bear the guilt - and ignored it every. other. day. I have been thinking about it, of course, but not as much as I should have been.

Part of me is whispering, "why are you even telling them that?!", and another part is retorting "accountability!!" quite sternly. That's why I'm telling you guys - so you can... what was it Kenzie said? *switches tab* Okay, and I quote: "If you fail [at your writing goals], everyone screams at you like a wild black-toothed banshee and stabs you in the left toe with a rusted metal pitchfork". [Seriously, follow Kenzie. She's one of the funniest writer-bloggers this side of the internet.] [Also seriously, please do not stab me with a rusted metal pitchfork. I happen to be extremely attached to my left big toe. Some stern words - or even banshee screams - would suffice.]

I don't know if you've noticed yet - I think I've done a pretty good job of hiding it - but I don't actually have a life?

I honestly have no idea what I've been doing. Which makes me very nervous when people ask. 

 

Read:

Entwined (Heather Dixon). I LOVED THIS BOOK. Even though at times I was a leeetle thrown by the technology in the fairy tale (they talk about building an underground railway, for example, and have pistols), I decided it added character. And the romance[s]! *squees*

A heap of ebooks/novellas that were free on Amazon.Most of them were - okay. Not great. One in particular was terrible - although I thought at the start it had potential, I just couldn't figure out what was going on... or why I should care. (I will not name it.) A few novellas of Jodi Hedlund were cute, and I read Fairchild's Lady by Roseanna M. White, who blogs on GoTeenWriters sometimes.

In Between (Jenny B. Jones). Free on Amazon, but really enjoyable! The narrator is snarky to cover her emotional vulnerability, and the characters jump off the page. My only complaint would be that the ending felt a bit off, but that's probably because it's the first book of a series.

At First Sight (Jennifer Lynn Barnes). An assassin falls in love with his target, who's the first person to look at him and actually see him - usually people's gaze slides right off. I quite enjoyed it (although there are a few little uncorrected moral issues, such as petty theft). Someone recommended this and the book below, but I don't remember who.

The Winner's Curse (Marie Rutkosk). Five stars! If only the library had the rest of the trilogy... >.<

The Sorceress and the Squid (Emily Mundell). I got an ARC copy from the author! I GOT TO READ THE BOOK EARLY! *coughs* I mean, I am to write an honest review to help promote the book, which required me to read it before its release.

Watched:

Agents of Shield: Season 2. Oookay. This is rated MA15 for good reasons. Torture (really made me wince), death (obviously), boy/girl stuff (can we leave it at kissing, guys??), and cutting up a dead body (that really freaked me out I was covering my eyes gross gross gross). There were good parts too, though. That Hydra double agent from season 1? That person totally got even creepier and started torturing/killing people for 'closure'! uhhh... not a good part, sorry. Well... FitzSimmons (my OTP!) finally decided to get their act together!! (actual good news!)

(actual bad news: -- straight after Fitz manages to arrange a first date, Simmons gets sucked into a rock, which promptly re-solidifies.-- NOT OKAY. [select to read]) And in other OTP news: my new OTP - Static Quake (Lincoln x Daisy) - has had a very promising start! (on the other hand, I've looked up enough Season 3 spoilers on YouTube... -- I LOVED LINCOLN why can't they let Daisy be happy, okay?!-- Yup.

Doctor Who: Season 8. Apparently I just needed a bit of a break between Eleven and Twelve? Because Twelve is actually quite good, in a bitingly sarcastic (but brittle) way.

Arrival - on recommendation from Faith. That twist - it made me rethink the whole movie (and I'm still not sure I got it?) But it's a brilliant movie and I loved the incredibly different structure of the alien language (and Jeremy Renner, of course... although I struggle to see him as not Hawkeye). 

Amazing Grace. Rewatch because it's been ages. (And because when I first watched it I didn't know Benedict Cumberbatch.) (Not that I know him now, but I'm familiar with some of his wor- scratch that, I now know Benedict Cumberbatch.) BUT I FORGOT THAT WILLIAM PITT DIES IN THE MOVIE.

Music:

Owl City -Fireflies and Vanilla Twilight are my new favourite songs. I have been listening to them on loop and that's rare for me. 
2Cellos - Wake Me Up and Game of Thrones Theme. I haven't seen the show, but it's great music for my WIP. And Wake Me Up... watch it, okay?

[I should probably call this section my TBR additions, or something, but it tends to include movies, so I have no idea what to call it.]

Illuminae (Amie Kaufman), The Lost Kingdom of Bamarre (Gail Carson Levine), The Beautiful Pretender (Melanie Dickerson).

La La Land (is it okay? I mean, for those who've seen it, is it appropriate?)

The only real thing I have planned for May is to continue with Three Sisters. (Maybe this will be the story I finish??)

Oh. And I suppose I should do my assignment for my tertiary education thingy. It's Library Studies - and yet it's really boring??

Calendar: ... now it's June second.
Me:

April: mostly Camp NaNo, right?

Here's my slightly late recap for April. (but maybe that's a good thing, that it's late? because I know on the 30th of April my Blogger feed exploded and I still haven't gotten to you all yet, sorry!)

Obviously, April was Camp NaNo month. I survived. Just.

As you can see from the graph, I started off fine. Life rapidly caught up. I had trouble writing; not that I never had time, or that I was 'blocked', but I'd sit down and I simply didn't want to write.

The situation seemed dire. (Actually it was quite bad.) But I discovered myWriteClub (which I may have mentioned?) and managed to get a good 8 days or so of 1.2-1.8k.

 
 Three Sisters is nowhere near finished, though! The graph will tell you that my goal was 'only' 15k; I'm not slamming myself, I'm just accepting that although this is a great achievement for me, my story is obviously going to take more than 15,000 words. (Haven't even got the girl + guy to meet yet! ....that's my Cinderella thread; the whole story is not a romance. Imagine if I was writing a romance and, 15k into the story, they hadn't met yet??)

Maybe I'll do some snippets or something of Three Sisters sometime. Not now, though... there is no way I'm letting my NaNo writing out. Even to you guys. I didn't have a plan (still don't know how I'm meant to wrap up all my characters' problems??), and my characters are still developing and changing as I write. (I barely recognise the characters on the first page, to be honest.) But sometime I'll tell you more about the sisters; Billie (who feels responsible for her sisters' safety) and Elsie (who lost her happily-ever-after) and Josie (impulsive Josie, whose sister stood in front of a Beast for her and now she can't shake the guilt). 

We had two weeks of school holidays - which doesn't really affect me directly anymore! - but it meant we spent a lot of time catching up with family. 

Also, I did that local comic-con volunteer thing. It was awesome. There was a ten-year-old kid who was a super ninth Doctor with his leather jacket, and every time I saw him I wanted to tell him how pleased I was someone remembered Nine, but I didn't want to be a creepy stranger-lady. ;) Of course, I hadn't had any previous experience with comic-cons, and apparently the point is to walk up to a random stranger who'd dressed like a character you love, and ask for a photo with them? Is this conclusion I drew correct?? (Forgot a camera, though, so... Nine/Eleven/Batman/Galadriel/etc escaped.)

 

Read: 

Fairest, Marissa Meyer. Did not enjoy. I like happy endings. Sorry, all you fans. I'll still give Cinder a chance, though.

The New Recruit, Jill Williamson. GoTeenWriters author + free on Kindle? Obviously I'm reading that.

By Darkness Hid, Jill Williamson. Now I have to find the rest of the series!

The Iron Queen [+ series], Julie Kagawa. Read at your own discretion; these books go full 'fey' (Oberon/Mab/Puck), which was a bit too much for me; also there seemed to be a compulsory pre-battle sleeping-together-for-the-first-time scene for both of the couples, which mostly 'faded out', but it's pretty obvious what happened. Morally, I do not recommend these (also contain a few explosive swears with no warning); story-wise, meh - in my opinion they aren't worth the risk.

Scythe, Neal Shusterman. Okay. So I enjoyed reading this book, but when my mum read it, her opinion was 'sick' and 'not helpful'. That made me think a bit more. It's true that this book is... morally ambiguous. It doesn't say killing is wrong. Right at the start, Faraday took the kitchen knife to carve their neighbour up with (that's when my mum started saying it was sick, which that bit completely is). There were several spots I thought the author could put in a redemptive bit, about the whole situation showing how much we need God or something, but he didn't. I suppose the rest of the series could be where that comes in, but on its own, Scythe doesn't have that. 
The False Prince, Jennifer A. Nielsen. I love these books. Although by the third one, it gets to the point where everything goes catastrophically wrong and I just squint at Sage and mutter, 'How is this part of your plan because I know it is and you can't trick me.'
Rogue, Mark Walden. Book 6 or something? of the H.I.V.E. series - about a school for training kid villains. Which sounds worse than it is, because the main characters spend all their time stopping villains (??). Contains violence, but cartoonish violence.

Watched:  

The Great Escape. DID I MENTION I LIKE HAPPY ENDINGS WELL THIS WASN'T.

The Desolation of Smaug. A rewatch, but I wanted to see Thranduil and Legolas and Bard and of course more Bilbo. And more Thorin and Fili and Kili and Bofur and all of them. *squees* *and doesn't watch Battle of the Three Armies because nooo* *nopity nope*

Muppets Most Wanted. Only watched because my cousins were; I FORGOT TOM HIDDLESTON MAKES A 10-SECOND GUEST APPEARANCE. That was the best bit of the whole movie.

Doctor Who (season 5): Time of the Angels, Flesh and Stone. Rewatch, but the angels were still totally creepy. ...I actually just wanted to see River again.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Rewatch. Because Bucky. (And Natasha. But not together, sadly.)
Thor. Loki had the potential to be a good guy. :'( Also Thor is sweet as always (once he loses his arrogance).

Music:

At Last, The King and Ghost of a King by Grey Havens. I have been listening to these on repeat.
He's a Pirate theme, violin cover, by Taylor Davis. Great for writing. 

Agents of Shield (season 2). Borrowed it from the library and I'm trying to watch it while I write this post, which is most of the reason it's late. :P

Doctor Who (season 8). I want to give Twelve a chance, even if it's just for Clara's sake. I miss Eleven, though; he was my first Doctor.

A Time to Speak and A Time to Rise by Nadine Brandes. I've read A Time to Die, and it was pretty good! Now I just have to get my hands on the other two. :)

The only real thing I have planned for May is to continue with Three Sisters. (Maybe this will be the story I finish??)

So that's April. I'm late - as usual - to the wrap-up party, but now you're here, welcome! Talk to me in the comments! About literally anything! *side-eyes Captain Literally* Almost literally anything! Not actually 'literally anything'. That would include some freaky stuff. But definitely Studio C, if you want to talk about that (I've still been binge-watching). ;)

What cool things did you do in April? How did you go with Camp, if you did that? I'd love to hear!

March: wasn't overly exciting

 [Note: WHAT has blogger done to my cute little pictures? They're all squished! And I spent so long on them!]

It's the end of March (almost), and while I've had this blog for less than one month, I've read enough to figure out that end-of-month recaps are apparently the way to go.

Excuse me while I search my brains for momentous happenings this month.

*scratches head*

I may have to resort to some creative lies for colour.

So!

I've been preparing for Camp NaNoWriMo! My WIP has the working title Three Sisters. (I will not keep that title. For some reason it makes me think of A Tale of Two Cities. Which I haven't even read.) You can read a bit more about protective older sister Billie here on Camp, if you like; I'll keep it short here and just say that I started with Beauty and the Beast (whatever it may end up by the time Camp's over). My cabin has been really welcoming - they found me through a comment I'd written on a GoTeenWriters article, too, which I thought was cool. :)

For my blog, I tried to write a few posts to have up my sleeve for April (hasn't worked so well). Because seriously. My official goal is 15k (I know it's low compared to some of you guys' goals... but if I aim much higher I give up once I get a few days behind). I hope to get 20k, though. And obviously I'm not going to have the time or energy or inspiration to write many posts.

 

Not a lot to report. My family's fine. We've had a heap of late (out-of-season) rain, which has been really relieving because summer was pretty dry and I was getting nervous (we use rainwater and I didn't want to go into the dry season with the tanks half empty).

I started a bullet journal - got all my ideas off Pinterest - and so far it's been pretty cool. I also toured a dairy farm, continued working on my tertiary education course (about libraries), and read less than I'd like.

 

I can't find enough good new books to read! (Recommendations welcome. I like twisted fairytales - magic's fine, but nothing too dark - and modern runaway stories - Gordon Korman's On the Run series is one example. But I'll read across genres; just no vampires, gone-too-far romance, things like that.)

Reread some of John Flanagan's Ranger's Apprentice series, and Jennifer A. Nielsen's Ascendance (False Prince) trilogy. Read the latest [last?] two of Melanie Dickerson's fairytale series, The Golden Braid and The Silent Songbird, because I'm always looking for fairytale retellings; this series is sometimes predictable and historically unlikely (oookay, a little more than sometimes) but can be a cute, fluffy medieval romance read without too much kissing (fine a lot of kissing but nothing further) or fairies (no fairies). I actually would have liked some fairies.

Rewatched Avengers and An Unexpected Journey. Watched The Force Awakens and Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Oh, and season 1 of Legends of Tomorrow (rated M for good reasons; I do not approve of all the content. But I adored Captain Canary!) (...too bad the kiss that established my OTP was promptly followed by Snart's death like WHAT.)

Music: I've been listening to Piano Guys, Peter Hollens (Mary Did You Know, Loch Lomond, Amazing Grace with Home Free - this one's awesome), Mission Impossible cover/medley by Piano Guys and Lindsey Stirling, and a Star Wars medley by Peter Hollens and Lindsey Stirling. 

Also (I'm not sure where to put this, but it's on YouTube, so here?) Studio C's comedy channel. My cabinmates recommended it and I binge-watched for about two days straight. Then I ran out of internet data. 

 

[Again with the squishing of my picture like I SPENT LITERAL HOURS DOING THESE. huh.]

Newsies: the Musical. I'd never heard of it before, but this was on several blogs.
Captain America: Civil War was already on my list... I've been putting it off because I DON'T WANT TO SEE MY BABIES FIGHTING OKAY.
Testament of Youth. Don't know much about this one, but I watched a YouTube trailer and it looks... heartbreaking.
Amazing Grace - I want to rewatch it because I don't remember it very well. (Also because I was not familiar with Benedict Cumberbatch or any of his work back then. Which brings me to - )
Sherlock season 4. I've read spoilers. From them I have concluded that Moffat thought we were too happy. Because [ killing Mary and having John blame and utterly hate Sherlock]? That isn't nice. (Although I look forward to seeing baby Watson... baby, uh... you know, I've quite forgotten her name... *wizard voice*)
The Lego Batman Movie. I watched three trailers and cried genuine tears of laughter. It looks like it might be better than The Lego Movie. (Which had... different humour to the kind I enjoy. But my young male cousins loved it.)

For Love and Honor, by Jody Hedlund. Micaiah's review is entirely to blame! :)

(Yes, there are a lot of movies here. and not a lot of books. as I said, recommendations welcome... and if there's a movie you think I should see, mention that as well.)

Volunteering for a local comic-con. It's only in its second year, but I've never been to any kind of comic-con, so it will be a completely new experience for me. (It has steampunk, too, and dollhouse miniaturists, and a viking/medieval history group. And it's free. Pretty good, I reckon - especially if it could get big enough in the next decade to attract some big names. That would be excellent.)

And of course - Camp NaNoWriMo! *stresses and promises to plot next time* *like I promised myself last NaNo* *and the Camp before that* Okay, I don't plot.

That's about it for me! (I even managed to restrain myself from telling those creative lies.) Now I have to go catch up on everyone else's March wrap-up summaries. Instead of working on Three Sisters. Which I should be doing because it's April.

What cool stuff did you do this month? I'd love to hear! (And of course: Have you ever been to a serious comic-con?) And tell me, HOW STRESSED ARE YOU FOR CAMP? and if you're not, TELL ME YOUR SECRETS.