What's Up Wednesday! | 09/07/14

What's Up Wednesday is a weekly blog hop created by Jaime Morrow and Erin L. Funk as a way for writers and readers to stay in touch!

What I'm Reading

Sadly I haven't really done any reading this past week, so I'm still in the middle of Equal Rites, Deadline and The Tenderness of Wolves. I'm hoping I'll get the chance to finish one of them soon!

What I'm Writing

I'm still working away on my portfolio, which is the main reason I haven't really done any reading. I still have quite a lot of work to do, and I end up making myself feel guilty for not doing any work if I sit down and read for a bit.

What Inspires Me Right Now

Oddly enough I think knowing most of the other people on my course are stressing about their portfolios as well is making me feel better, and giving me a little more confidence. I think it's easy to convince yourself you're the only one going through something, and when you realise you're not it takes a real weight off your shoulders!

What Else I've Been Up To

On Saturday one of my friends was celebrating her birthday, so a group of us were invited to her house for a BBQ - it was my first BBQ of the year, and it was a really warm, sunny day so it was lovely. Plus I got to try some ginger wine which was very yummy. We spent the majority of the day playing Bullshit (I'd never played a card game before, so that was interesting) and Werewolf, which is sort of a more sophisticated version of Wink Murder. It was a really fun day, but thanks to the trains being ridiculous I didn't get home until midnight, despite leaving my friend's house at half past nine!

Other than that I've just been working on my portfolio, applying for jobs (wish me luck!) and organising a visit home. I'm off home on the 20th for two weeks just for a change of scenery - last year I managed to get all my coursework done at home by taking over the dining room table and setting myself a routine every day, so I'm hoping I can get a good chunk of my portfolio done while I'm there.

What's new with you?

July Reads!

This month I gave myself a fairly ambitious TBR and then fell into a horrible reading slump, so next month I'm going to set myself less to read with the hope that that somehow helps me to read more. Reverse psychology's weird.

All three of the books on my TBR this month are books I'm already a substantial amount of the way through, and I want to finish them soon!

Deadline

by Mira Grant

Shaun Mason is a man without a mission. Not even running the news organization he built with his sister has the same urgency as it used to. Playing with dead things just doesn't seem as fun when you've lost as much as he has. 

But when a CDC researcher fakes her own death and appears on his doorstep with a ravenous pack of zombies in tow, Shaun has a newfound interest in life. Because she brings news-he may have put down the monster who attacked them, but the conspiracy is far from dead. 

Now, Shaun hits the road to find what truth can be found at the end of a shotgun.

Equal Rites

by Terry Pratchett

The last thing the wizard Drum Billet did, before Death laid a bony hand on his shoulder, was to pass on his staff of power to the eighth son of an eighth son. Unfortunately for his colleagues in the chauvinistic (not to say misogynistic) world of magic, he failed to check on the new-born baby's sex...

The Tenderness of Wolves

by Stef Penney

1867, Canada: as winter tightens its grip on the isolated settlement of Dove River, a man is brutally murdered and a 17-year old boy disappears. Tracks leaving the dead man's cabin head north towards the forest and the tundra beyond. In the wake of such violence, people are drawn to the township - journalists, Hudson's Bay Company men, trappers, traders - but do they want to solve the crime or exploit it? 

One-by-one the assembled searchers set out from Dove River, pursuing the tracks across a desolate landscape home only to wild animals, madmen and fugitives, variously seeking a murderer, a son, two sisters missing for 17 years, a Native American culture, and a fortune in stolen furs before the snows settle and cover the tracks of the past for good.

What are you planning to read in July?

J.

What's Up Wednesday | 25/06/14

What's Up Wednesday is a weekly blog hop created by Jaime Morrow and Erin L. Funk as a way for writers and readers to stay in touch!

What I'm Reading

This week I finally started to pull myself out of the reading slump I've found myself in for the majority of this month, hooray!

First I read Carswell's Guide to Being Lucky by Marissa Meyer, which is another of Meyer's short stories set in The Lunar Chronicles universe. This one takes place before the events of the series and tells the story of Captain Thorne and Kate Fallow, who was mentioned in Cress. It was a lot of fun!

After that I read Malkin Child by Livi Michael, which is a historical middle grade novella about the Pendle Witches from the POV of Jennet Device, the little girl who testified against her family in 1612, leading to their execution. I really enjoyed this. It might be written for children but anyone can enjoy it, and I really enjoyed how Michael portrayed the story; I've seen so many theories regarding the Pendle Witches claiming that Jennet deliberately testified against them because she didn't like her family and she wanted to see them hanged, whereas this story argues she was a little girl who was misused by the law. I definitely recommend it - my edition's only 111 pages long!

I haven't read any more of Deadline yet, even though I'm eager to. My slump came along for various reasons that I won't go into here and I hate ending up in a slump when I'm halfway through a book I'm enjoying. I want to pick it up and finish it soon, but I know as soon as I finish it I'll want to read Blackout, the third and final book in the trilogy. So I might treat myself to a copy of Blackout some time this week and then marathon the rest of the trilogy.

On Monday I also started reading Stef Penney's The Tenderness of Wolves. I came across a second hand copy for only £1.50 and the story intrigued me - it's been a while since I read a whodunnit, and I don't think I've read anything set in Canada either - but I'm having trouble getting into it. I'm interested in the main character, but the narrative keeps breaking away and jumping around to all these other characters I don't care about all that much and it's boring me a little. I'm hoping the story picks up soon!

What I'm Writing

Still novelling away. I recently did a wordcount (as I'm currently doing my MA in Creative Writing and my current WIP is also what I've been working on for my portfolio) and I have over 28,000 words! That probably sounds like nothing when you take into account that I've been working on this novel since October, but before I did this MA I suffered from serious story ADD. I'd start a story, get bored with it and move on. This is the longest I've ever worked on a single project and I'm really proud of myself.

On top of that, my portfolio is 30,000 words, so it's good to know I'm on track. Now I just need to go through and a do a major edit on everything I've got and write a 5,000 word reflective essay - I have a lot of work this summer!

What Inspires Me Right Now

People wanting to read my novel! I'll talk a little more about this below, but at the weekend I met some lovely people who found my story really interesting and want to read the whole thing and it's a wonderful feeling.

What Else I've Been Up To

On Saturday we had our MA Showcase, which basically meant that we got up in front of an audience of around 30 people and read extracts from our work. I decided to read the prologue from my current WIP and I was really pleased with the response I got - a fair few absolutely lovely people told me that they enjoyed my extract and that they'd love to read more, and that just made me so happy. It's always nice to know you're doing something right!

This past week I also finally saw Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Muppets Most Wanted, both of which were showing at our campus cinema. I enjoyed them, but I have to admit I was expecting to see more Bucky in The Winter Soldier.

I desperately wanted to see Belle while it was out, but I've been a little bit skint recently. Today I could finally afford a cinema trip, only to discover that the last Belle showing was yesterday. Sigh. I really, really wanted to see it.

I also started an account over on myWriteClub, which is a fun little site where you can keep track of your writing progress and any of your friends' - you can find me here if you want to!

What's new with you?

What's Up Wednesday! | 18/06/14

What's Up Wednesday is a weekly blog hop created by Jaime Morrow and Erin L. Funk as a way for writers and readers to stay in touch!

This week I'm back to participating in WUW after taking a week out last week, purely because last week was so boring there was nothing worth sharing with all of you lovely people!

What I'm Reading

After a horrible slump brought on by a sudden onslaught of uni work, this week I've slowly started to get back into reading. On Monday I read Polly Bloom's Old Wives' Lore: A Book of Old-Fashioned Tips & Remedies, which is a little non-fiction book that does what it says on the tin. It probably sounds like a bit of an odd read, but for someone who's currently writing a novel about a woman who works as a healer this book was actually full of some pretty useful information. Not to mention it taught me that haemorrhoids may have played a part in the outcome of the Battle of the Waterloo...

I'm hoping I'll get back into Mira Grant's Deadline this week as I haven't continued with it for over two weeks now! It's not the book's fault at all, I'm loving the Newsflesh trilogy, uni just got on top of me for a while and every time I considered reading for fun I felt as though I wasn't allowed. It's not a good feeling.

What I'm Writing

This week I'm actually going to be having a go at writing one of the climactic scenes of my WIP, which seems a little crazy considering I'm not there yet in terms of where I am in the draft. Not only have I been advised to include one of the climactic scenes in my portfolio for my MA, but recently I've been really stressed (thus my lack of reading etc.) and it made me fall out of love with my WIP. My wonderful coursemates have made me start to fall in love with the idea again, and I think writing one of the scenes I'm really excited to write will help me to write the rest of the novel, too!

I'm also working on a steampunk short story, in which a middle-aged librarian mistakenly sets an assassin on himself, which has been lying around unfinished for far too long!

What Inspires Me Right Now

The other writers on my MA course - they're amazing!

What Else I've Been Up To

Today one of my friends turns 24, so we're spending the day in town looking at all the pretty things we can't afford before a group of us go out for some Thai food this evening - I'm really excited for a stir-fry!

I haven't been up to too much this past week, other than stressing about the future as I so often do - there's something so uneasy about being in your 20's and having no idea where you might be a year from now, but when the thought of life after uni isn't making me want to be a bit sick it's pretty exciting. I just hope I can find a job I can dive straight into; the last thing I want is to be moping around in unemployment.

Other than that, I've started watching the second season of Orphan Black, and I've been incredibly excited since I discovered that Marissa Meyer will be releasing a new book, Fairest, in January, which will delve into the backstory of Levana. You can find out more about it here!

What have you been up to?

What's Up Wednesday! | 04/06/14

What's Up Wednesday is a weekly blog hop created by Jaime Morrow and Erin L. Funk as a way for writers and readers to stay in touch!

What I'm Reading

I feel like this past week has flown by, it feels like only yesterday I was writing last week's WUW post, and as a result I haven't done any reading this week. I'm still in the middle of Deadline by Mira Grant, somehow I just haven't found the time to read!

What I'm Writing

Today I'm working on more of my novel, but these past few days I've actually been returning to a few pieces of short fiction and some poetry! There's a couple of competitions I'd like to enter - I want to get more of my writing out there! - and there are quite a few short stories lying unfinished in my documents folder that I'd really like to finish. Some of them have been there for over a year!

What Inspires Me Right Now

Yesterday I spent more time than I should have on Pinterest. I love gathering story inspiration there, in fact I have a board for my novel that I fill with pictures and photographs - it's a lot of fun!

Also, shout out to Pinterest who, when I searched for pictures of a noose, put a phone number and website at the top of the page for anyone who might be considering suicide. I know a lot of websites probably do that now, but it still makes me glad when I see it there.

(Don't worry, I'm not suicidal - there were just a lot of nooses in the 16th century!)

What Else I've Been Up To

This week I have not one, but two cinema trips to tell you about!

Last Thursday I went to see Maleficent with a couple of friends, and to be honest I had a very similar experience seeing this as I did to seeing Godzilla: I can't decide how I feel about it yet. I was really hoping for a story that was about a villain that was evil because she liked being evil, I'm a little bored of villains being 'misunderstood'.

That being said there were some elements of the film that I really enjoyed, and even if the story isn't the most original I've seen you should definitely see it for Angelina Jolie's performance. She was a fabulous Maleficent.

Then on Saturday one of my friends came to visit me. We went to Bella Italia for dinner - I had the most amazing cheese and chicken pasta dish that I would have taken a picture of if I hadn't been starving - and then we went to see the new X-Men film. I enjoyed it, but I think I like X-Men: First Class just a little more.

I also recently heard Channing Tatum has been cast as Gambit, and I'm not impressed. Gambit's always been one of my favourites and I'm still not over the fact that he wasn't in the original films. Hopefully Tatum will surprise me with a Gambit-worthy performance.

I've had a very nostalgic week, too. After we went to see X-Men, my friend and I decided to watch The Road to El Dorado; it's one of those films I always seem to end up watching with her, and we know it that well that I'm pretty certain we can quote the entire film at each other. Then I discovered that it's 14 years old this year!

On Monday I made another one of my friends sit down and watch The Lion King because she had a Disney-deprived childhood, and that's when I remembered that The Lion King came out in 1994, making it 20 years old this year. I feel so old!

What's new with you?

What's Up Wednesday! | 28/05/14

What's Up Wednesday is a weekly blog hop created by Jaime Morrow and Erin L. Funk as a way for writers and readers to stay in touch!

What I'm Reading

Right now I'm a little bit over halfway through Deadline, the second book in the Newsflesh trilogy, and I've already cried. I'm loving this trilogy so much, and it's recently revealed something that I definitely did not expect. I'm probably going to have to go out and buy myself a copy of Blackout once I'm done with it; I have to know how this story ends.

It's also been a while since I picked up Maria V. Snyder's Scent of Magic, which I started pack in April. I'm hoping I can finish it and read Rainbow Rowell's Fangirl in the next couple of days, before I make a start on my June TBR, but that all depends on what kind of mood Deadline leaves me in.

What I'm Writing

I've been a bit bad this week in terms of writing and haven't really done any. I think what I really need to do is sit down and actually write out a proper plan for my WIP. I know it's pretty shocking that I don't already have one, but because I know where my novel's going I've always just been writing towards that point. Now, though, the story has expanded so much compared to what it once was so I need to organise all of my subplots before I drive myself mad.

What Inspires Me Right Now

For some reason I always struggle to think of an answer for this section of WUW, and then I see someone else's and I'm like 'damn, why didn't I think of that?' For whatever reason I find it difficult to pinpoint something as a definite inspiration, and sometimes I think we just can't be inspired but we need to make things anyway. Half the struggle of making any art form - whether it's writing, painting, singing, photography - is pushing yourself to do it when you're not feeling inspired. So I guess what inspires me is that every book lining the shelves in the book shops is there because someone slaved away at it, no matter how inspired they were.

What Else I've Been Up To

Last Friday was the Hannibal finale, and now I have to wait another year for season three. On the plus side there's going to be a season three so I suppose I can't really complain. I think I speak for all of us in the Fannibal family when I say we're all still pretty emotional.

Over the past few days I've managed to marathon the first series of Orphan Black. I started watching this show back when it first came out but, for whatever reason, I didn't carry on after episode two. I kept seeing it all over Tumblr, though, so this week I decided to pick up where I left off and I really enjoyed it. Tatiana Maslany is an amazing actress. If you're into sci-fi/thriller shows then I recommend checking it out!

One of my friends has also recently got me into an online game called Town of Salem which is deadly when it comes to procrasination. I don't know why it's so addictive but I've been enjoying it. It's a game in which you're given a role in the town, but no one else knows your role and you don't know anyone else's and it's a race to see whether the Town, the Mafia, or the Serial Killers win. It's surprisingly fun.

Other than that it's been pretty quiet/boring here. I'm off to the cinema tomorrow (what a shock) to see Maleficent, which I'm really excited for, and I'm hoping to go and see the new X-Men film soon, too.

What's new with you?

Top Ten Tuesday | Books That Made Me Cry

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly feature created at The Broke and the Bookish. Each week you compile a list of ten books which coincide with that week's theme. You can find out everything you need to know about joining in here!

This week's Top Ten Tuesday theme is a freebie - we can pick our own topic! So, as I'm currently in the middle of a trilogy that's breaking my heart more and more with each page I turn, I thought today would be a fitting time to share with you the top ten books that have made me cry. Unfortunately I could only think of nine, but that'll have to do!

I never used to be much of a crier when it came to books and films, but half way through adolescence I started becoming an emotional wreck whenever I watched or read something which, for whatever reason, really struck a chord with me. There are a lot of instances in which I haven't cried where I probably should - I've never found any of the deaths on Game of Thrones particuarly cry-worthy, nor did I cry while reading Mockingjay - but do something horrible to a character that I love and I'll weep.

So, in the order I read them, here are the ten nine books that made me weep:

Noughts & Crosses by Malorie Blackman
I first read this series, which deals with themes such as race and terrorism, back in my early teens, and it had a huge impact on me. The first book in the series has always been my favourite, though the other three are also brilliant in their own way, and it has the honour of being, to my knowledge, the first ever book that made me cry. This is still one of my all time favourite books, and if you haven't read it you're missing out.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J.K. Rowling

Harry Potter is always going to be one of my all time favourite series, and as a lover of Sirius Black I'm sure those of you familiar with the series can understand why this book made the list. I'm still not over it.






Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling

I'm sure all of you can understand why this book's on the list. Oddly enough I didn't cry because of the deaths in this book, I actually cried because of the epilogue. It was so emotional to see these characters that I'd grown up with leading happy, peaceful lives, and knowing that as soon as I finished reading the epilogue the story I'd followed for the past ten years would be over.



Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks

During the first year of my A Levels I studied War Literature, and while Birdsong wasn't on our syllabus we were given it to read by our teacher and I'm so glad we were. If you're familiar with the BBC adaptation but haven't read the book please, please read it; the adaptation was appalling compared to how exquisite this book is. Considering it takes place during WW1 I'm sure you can imagine why this book made it onto my list, and now is the perfect time to read it as this year marks 100 years since the start of the war.


The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

WW2 this time, and I imagine even those of you who haven't read Zusak's masterpiece know someone who has; this book touches everyone who reads it in some way, and I'm not ashamed to say I cried more than once while reading it. If you've yet to read it then do pick it up, but I'd recommend the film adaptation too - it's a great adaptation!



The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

An obvious one, I know. Do I really need to say why this book made me cry? I'm pretty certain everyone in the world has read this book by now. I wouldn't call this book one of my all time favourite books by any means, but all the same I found it very emotional.





Glitches by Marissa Meyer

This is probably a bit of an odd one because it's really more of a short story than a book, but I cried reading this. If you're familiar with The Lunar Chronicles then you've probably read this (but if you haven't Meyer has made it available online here!) and if you're not familiar with The Lunar Chronicles then you need to make yourself familiar with them. It's one of my favourite series, and it's so fun. This is a prime example of what I mentioned earlier: getting emotional over a certain character.

Cinder is one of my favourite fictional heroines (why not check out my Top 5 YA Heroines?) and this story takes place before the events of Cinder when Cinder is a little girl. It just broke my heart to see her so little and so vulnerable and so unloved by the majority of the people around her. I definitely cried.


Feed by Mira Grant

And now we're onto the trilogy I mentioned above as currently being half way through. I can't say too much about this book because the reason it made me cry - and I mean really, really cry - is a huge spoiler for those of you who might want to read it. Those of you who have read this book, however, can probably guess why I cried so much at the end of this book. This is another case of growing attached to a character and then having my heart broken because of it. If you haven't read these books yet please do, I haven't even finished the second book yet but I'm already certain this is one of my new favourite trilogies.


Deadline by Mira Grant

Yep, that's right. The second book made me cry, too. In fact I'm not even half way through this book yet and I've already cried almost as much as I did at the end of the first one. Again, those of you familiar with this book can guess why it's already made me into an emotional wreck. Read this trilogy, but prepare yourself for heartbreak.



So those are the top ten nine books that have made me cry! Which books make you emotional?