September/October Ishness
We briefly interrupt the silence of this blog for a late "ishness" post! What is "ishness" you ask? It's like doings or happenings, but more fun. Deborah does this monthly thing over on her blog, and she didn't mean for it to become a meme, but I like it and she said it was okay for me to participate anyway. Usually it's an end-of-the-month thing, but I'm kind of late for September and early for October, so we'll just roll with it right now.
HIGHLIGHTS OF THE MONTHOur new adventure - my husband got a new job, which is a huge blessing, but also entails a large change of venue. In about a week, our family will be packing up all our worldly possessions and heading out of sunny North Carolina and expeditioning to the frozen tundra of Wisconsin. If you've followed my blog at all, you know that I am very excited about the prospect of returning to the North and "real" Winters. We are sad to leave our friends and our wonderful church and the family we have here, though. So, it's a lot of emotions. But mostly good ones.Brantland's 1st birthday - yep, the little guy turned 1 at the end of September. We had a lovely birthday party for him in conjunction with his Grandpa and Great Grandpa, as they all share late September birthdays. That was fun.
Leiana's birthday/fall festival/costume party - since we'll be missing our church's annual Fall Festival (that we absolutely LOVE), we t hrew Leiana an early birthday party (yes, she's turning SEVEN next week! Crazy) and invited all our friends and asked them to dress up. We ate pizza, hung out, had cake and sang "Happy Birthday" to our sweet eldest child. It was also a good way to sort of have a "farewell" celebration. It was a very sweet time.
New car - We bought a new (to us, it's a 2010) Ford Expedition, and we have dubbed it "Shackleton." It's enormous, but I'm getting used to it, and I do enjoy all the extra space (and having seats for more than just our family... as we heretofore our biggest car was a Ford Escape named "Sirius" (why yes, I do like naming things and playing with words... why do you ask?) 
New phones - yep, I finally joined the rest of the 21st century and got a smart phone. I have dubbed it "Perry" so that I can say things like, "Where's Perry?" and "Oh, there you are, Perry!" and "It's a phone, it doesn't do much." and "Curse you Perry the smart phone!" and other entertaining things like that WRITINGNo new writing lately. Still working hard on polishing Yorien's Hand. I made it through all the major edits and notes from my beta readers. Then I set out to work on scouring the manuscript for all my overused words (and let me tell you, there were quite a few of those - my editor is awesome and catalogued them in alphabetical order with the number of times each one was used... which was wonderfully helpful!) Made it through those. Now I have one or two major scenes still to add to help the story flow better... though I cannot recall what those are right now (it's late as I'm writing this, don't worry, I'll remember, or I have it written down somewhere... oh yes, now I remember!) And then the final polishing will commence! In spite of all the craziness of getting the house ready to move and sell, we're working hard to make sure Yorien's Hand stays on track!I have been continuing to mull over ideas for the next series after the Minstrel's Song - which I'll talk about a lot more once we get into 2016. I'll be revealing the series title and working on polishing the first book and hopefully finishing the second book in that series, as well as doing some more outlining for my sci-fi series... and then there's the mysterious saga that we've been referring to simply as "World Three" (which isn't entirely accurate, as it will be my FOURTH world/series... but hey, we like the name... so it stays for n0w - mystery, intrigue. All I can tell you about this one is that we're seriously considering a story that deals with the three races: men, elves, and dwarves... other than that... well, it's still too tentative to say). READINGI finished the first two Mistborn books (Mistborn: The Final Empire, and The Well of Ascension by Brandon Sanderson) and enjoyed them. I liked book #2 better than the first one, but they were both good. I need to read the third book, but I have to wait a bit.
I also got the chance to beta read After by Savannah Jezowski, author of Wither one of the Five Enchanted Roses stories. It is a prequel to Wither, and I have to tell you, I really enjoyed it. I won't tell you much about it, but when it's finished I think it's going to be fantastic. (I know zombies aren't for everyone, and usually they're really not my thing, either, but I really like her unique take on that particular genre, and how she's made them fantasy-esque... and the fact that her story comes from a Christian worldview). In other news, this is the cover for After - isn't it cool?
Since I don't have the third Mistborn book, I went back to my stack of waiting books and picked up the next one in my pile: Secrets Kept by JL Mbewe. Two pages in and I was absolutely smitten. I'm a bit further into the story now and I'm still loving every minute of it. I have no idea what's going on or why things are happening, but I'm excited to find out! And I love that she dropped me into the middle of her world with little explanation and it's unfolding gradually for me. I tend to really like that about a story - though some explanation is always nice. So far, Mbewe is doing a good job with that balancing act.
I'm also reading Red Sails to Capri out loud to Leiana as part of her second grade curriculum, and that is a really fun story. We're having a lot of fun with it, and there are a lot of accents, so I'm getting to use the full range of my "voices" ability. Love it! Reading out loud is one of my favorite things. (Shhh, this is way off in the distance, but I would love to be the narrator for my own audiobooks someday... but I need to be able to do it well... which means a lot of time and effort, and maybe a recording studio of some kind).
WATCHEDSince we've been a bit busy (and trying to get Yorien's Hand ready for distribution) we haven't been watching much.We finished season 8 of Doctor Who. AHHHHHHH! What an amazing season. I wasn't sure about Peter Capaldi, but he's won my heart. The first couple episodes were a little rocky, but he hit his stride pretty quick. Absolutely love it, cannot wait until series 9.... but I'm going to have to.
We started watching Gotham. Not sure how I feel about it yet. It's set during Jim Gordon's early years as a detective, so Bruce Wayne is like 12. And Gotham without Batman is pretty depressing. However, the acting (especially by those playing Harvey Bullock and the Penguin and Alfred characters is pretty stellar... so we're giving it a longer chance).NCIS season 12. Ah, Gibbs. Definitely one of my all-time favorite characters. And shows.
Cinderella (the new one). Liked it a lot better the second time around. I still have issues with voice-over narration that lasts beyond the first 15-20 minutes, and Cate Blanchett's lack of motivation explanation (rhyme!), but it's a sweet movie and I like it a lot. OCTOBER/NOVEMBER PLANS?Well... move to Wisconsin.
Publish Yorien's Hand.And... er... watch the Cubs win the World Series? That would be swell.
I'll keep you updated on how those goals are coming. How about you, dear Reader? I hope you're having a good Autumn. Anyone planning on doing Nano this year?