Writing Progress: Jan - mid-Feb

Happy Katsucon weekend! 

I had some ideas for posts this weekend, but I didn't get any of them ready in time. Sorry. Instead, I'm going to talk about how my writing has gone the past month and a half or so! I'm really proud of how I've been doing since the new year and I wanted to take some time to show it off ヽ( ᐛ )ノ♪♬

This post is gonna be more about numbers than what I've been focusing on writing. The numbers are what I'm more excited about, tbh

Omakase Box Review: January

This year, Otakon partnered with Omakase with an amazing deal: register for Omakase between Jan 11th and the 23rd, and get your Otakon badge at a 100% discount! (In other words, for free. They worded it just about every way but calling it free.) 

Considering my Otakon badge last year was $90 including shipping, I was all for this deal. I'm very depressed with the thought of having to pay adult badge rates now that I'm 18, so this was a good way to trick myself into thinking that I didn't have to deal with it yet.

(Katsucon is going to kill me OTL) 

Anyway, I figured this was a good opportunity to review Omakase! I've been curious about a couple different subscription boxes, but I've never had an excuse to try one out before. 

As a disclaimer: I don't watch Naruto. I went into this with the intention of passing on the contents of the box to friends who did. I have very little background knowledge about Naruto. 

So let's begin!

Stars Above by Marissa Meyer

TL;DR I'm still not ready to move on from The Lunar Chronicles

finished 2/4/16

AKA "Thank god Marissa Meyer announced the comic books because this probably would have killed me". 

As Stars Above contained some short stories that had already been published, I got through the book in about 24 hours. I still read the book end-to-end, but there were at least four short stories that I was already familiar with. 

I'm really glad to have Stars Above since I only have Cinder in paperback, meaning I didn't have copies to The Queen's Army or Carswell's Guide to Being Lucky (or The Little Android, but I don't know if that was included in one of the books or only released online). Now I don't have to worry about getting my hands on a paperback if I ever want to read them!

The new short stories are all so cute. And the prequel ones were slightly heartbreaking, since none of these kids ever managed to catch a break, even before the whole fiasco with Levana really started. Seeing everyone as small children was great and I wish that they all could've had bright and shiny childhoods, but y'know, they still turned out to be great adults. 

The epilogue was perfect. It was a really great way to wrap up the entire series, and I'm very content that the characters have all gotten happy endings after Winter. Even though I'm not personally ready to leave TLC behind, I have to admit that it couldn't have been wrapped up any better. 

I would like to see their lives after the epilogue, but I'm also content with knowing that they're moving on with their lives, and I'm hoping the comic books will give me a glimpse of it. 

I'm really excited for these comic books. This is the first series I've been actively interested in that's gotten a comic adaptation. (The Legend series got at least one, I think, but I've only encountered it once if that.) I'm really excited to see more of Iko in the spotlight. 

Stars Above also included a preview of Heartless, which is definitely helping me ignore the "my favorite series is over" feeling and dunking me straight into "NEW STORY!!" I'm really looking forward to how Marissa Meyer approaches an Alice in Wonderland prequel after TLC. I'm hoping for less "impending apocalypse" and more "internal struggles", but we'll see. I'm not gonna complain either way; I liked how TLC handled an impending apocalypse. 

TL;DR Stars Above made me realize that the TLC cast is ready to live their "happily ever after" and that I'm ready to see how Cath will handle what Meyer throws at her. I just gotta manage waiting until November. 

Dark Star by Bethany Frenette

TL;DR demons and superheroes in Minneapolis

TBR: <#100; added Jan 11, 2013

finished 2/1/15

My parents and I went on a trip to Alaska the week before I started junior year in 2013. This was our first major trip that I had my iPod Touch for, so I made as much of it as I could and got a few audiobooks and ebooks from my library. The only one I really ever touched was Dark Star. 

Unfortunately, I never got to finish the audiobook. I loved listening to it on the trip, but I struggle with being read to, and I fell asleep more than once and lost my place. My copy expired after two weeks and I had to wait well over a month to get it back--and by the time that had happened, school had started and I had no reason to sit still and try to focus to a disembodied voice. Our library didn't have a physical copy of the book and I was resigned to the fact I'd probably have to buy it.

But, of course, I couldn't find Dark Star at any bookstore by the time I figured I'd have to buy it for myself. I ended up waiting until after my 18th birthday and using a Visa gift card I'd gotten to order it off B&N's website. 

And then it sat for another four months before I picked it up. 

Amy Rubinate was a wonderful narrator. Her voice stuck with me even through those two years of waiting. I could hear her voice as I started reading Dark Star from the beginning. I actually made it to around the 200 page mark in the book over the course of our Alaska trip, which is about halfway through. I was really surprised by that! I had a hard time judging how much audiobook time converted to how many pages, and I figured I was still around the 30% mark by the time I conceded. 

I think listening to the audiobook first gave me a good impression of Audrey's voice in the book. I'm not sure I would have liked the narration as much had it not been for Amy Rubinate; I remembered enough of her voice that I was able to hear her voice and rhythm even after I passed the point I stopped listening. It was a nice experience to have an actual voice to match a character's narration to, instead of them sounding like my own inner voice. 

On to the book itself!

I don't think I've read anything with a similar concept to Dark Star before. I loved learning about the Kin and the Guardians and Harrowers and I feel like there's still so much that can be uncovered about them. The plot took a different route than what I expected, both when I started the audiobook and when I read past how far I'd listened. (This was probably because I only read the blurb once. There are some things I would tweak about the blurb having read the book now, but it functions well as it is.) 

I liked the fact that all the characters had human flaws--that Audrey was reckless in her good-intention attempts to save the day, that her mom Lucy had her reasons for keeping the truth from her, and that Iris and Elspeth had a bigger role than I anticipated at the point I stopped the audiobook. I wish that Gideon and Tink could have played bigger roles than they did, but the blurb for the next book suggests that Gideon's gonna catch up on the attention, so I'm looking forward to that. 

Part of the reason I like Audrey is that she had to face some consequences for her reckless decisions. I think she probably should've had a little more, but the adults around her (Lucy and Leon, really) called her out on her stupid moves, and like Lucy said, grounding Audrey didn't keep her from making the same decision again.  

I am also really grateful about how the romance played out! It was very subtle and had no influence on the plot whatsoever. I don't want to say too much but I'm so happy about this aspect. I feel like I'm too jaded from watching plots being overtaken by the romances and the heroines making stupid decisions out of love. Audrey never did that. I'm hoping that continues into the next book as well. 

 My only real complaint with Dark Star is mostly to do with a problem I created myself. Because I listened to Dark Star and the first Welcome to Night Vale podcasts while watching the Alaskan scenery, I associate Amy Rubinate and Cecil Baldwin's voices with mountains and pine trees and fog. And neither series has a setting like that. This association kept me from getting a good sense of Minneapolis as the setting of Dark Star. 

(I probably could have fixed this by looking at Google Maps while I was reading the paperback. That just now occurred to me. Whoops. I'm not sure if any of the locations that Audrey mentions are real or not.) 

TL;DR I'm really glad that I was finally able to finish this book! I've had a pretty long history with it and I'm honestly very glad to associate it with our trip to Alaska. Dark Star means a lot to me because of that. 

I listened to Dark Star's audiobook through the OverDrive app for iOS. I found the interface hard to use, but that might have been because of my library and having an iPod that Apple's forsaken for new ones. If you try it out, let me know what you think! I'm considering giving it a second chance now that I have a newer Android device that can support it. 

Blogging is Hard

I don't know what I did, but I threw myself out of my blogging groove in the past few weeks or so. This is the second time I remembered last-minute that I was supposed to have a post go up today.

So I figured I'd turn my complaining into the post that would go up, because I'm nowhere near done with any of the drafts I have saved.

And so is graphic design, but I think that deserves its own post someday.

I'm not promising this is going to make any sense. I'm tired and it's dreary outside and I'm trying to get this post up asap considering I started writing this post five hours after I was supposed to post something.