What I'm Reading
On Monday I finished Jane Nickerson's Strands of Bronze and Gold, which is a retelling of the Bluebeard myth set in 19th century Mississippi. I enjoyed it, but I found quite a few flaws in it. I'm planning on writing up a review of it soon, so keep an eye out for that if you're interested in hearing my thoughts on it!
Right now I'm making my way through Ian Mortimer's The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England and I'm liking it so far - it's very conversational, which is always a plus when it comes to non-fiction! I'm also making my way through Deborah Harkness's A Discovery of Witches, the first book in the All Souls trilogy, and Susan Ee's World After, the second book in the Penryn and the End of Days series. I'm not quite sure how I feel about them yet, but they're definitely both series with a lot of potential.
What I'm Writing
I'm still working away on my WIP, and I have to submit an extract on Friday for my first seminar with one of our new tutors next week. I'm working on a pretty important scene that a lot of my seminar group have been waiting to see for a while, so I just hope I can do it justice! That being said we usually submit pretty rough drafts to our workshops, so I'm not letting myself stress out over it too much.
I've recently started planning a novella I'd like to write for Camp NaNoWriMo in April, too, and by recently I mean really recently. It's going okay so far - I'm waiting until I finish the scene for Friday before I start planning it in more detail.
Outside of story writing I've been writing a bunch of reviews for throughout April (I'll be talking about this in more detail at the end of next week!) and the other day I finished writing a post about why we still read and write about witches, which I suppose is kind of a companion post to my post from last week about Historical Fiction.
I mentioned last week that I had to do a presentation. I had to talk about my current WIP and how it relates to the wider world, so I ended up doing a lot of thinking about why people write Historical Fiction and why witches still fascinate us. It seemed a shame to let that research go to waste!
What Inspires Me Right Now
March is Women's History Month in the UK, US and Australia, so this month I've been learning about some pretty amazing women that I'd never heard about before.
One woman I had heard about before is Ching Shih, the Cantonese pirate who terrorised the China sea in the early 19th century. I haven't delved into poetry in a while, but I'd love to try and write a sea shanty about her!
What Else I've Been Up To
Somehow last week I completely forgot to mention that I'm a Book Depository Affiliate! There's now a snazzy little link on the right that you can click if you want to buy yourself a book from The Book Depository, and I'll get a small commission. I'm still a student, so every little helps!
I've been a little unwell the past few days so I haven't been up to that much outside of reading and writing, but this weekend I'm off to my friend's birthday party. She's having a 1920's themed cocktail party so I get to dress up as a flapper - needless to say, I'm excited!
What's new with you?
