January Update
Things got a bit hectic in January, and now I’m several blog posts behind, so I figured I may as well just put all of January into a single post and try to continue as usual from there. (except I took too long to do this, so I’ll have to do the same for Feb…)
I also kind of just… didn’t know what to say about some of the books I read. Only one of them gave me strong feelings, and that already had a full review. The rest were a bit mixed or neutral, and thoughts and opinions were lacking.
So what the heck have I been doing?
Trying to sort out stuff with work and get answers (yes, still, a whole year later! I did a blog post about the situation if you want more context. The last update was a phone call over a month ago where I was told someone else would contact me. Are we at all shocked I haven’t heard anything since?)
A lot of stuff for Quiet Writers. We made an interview schedule for this year and locked in an author interview every month, plus a rec list blog post each month, and I set up an Indie Author Map! (partly to help folks meet the “read a book by a local author” prompt on the reading challenge, but also just to help people find more authors to support in general. There’s a map, which is very fun, but there’s also a spreadsheet with the same info to make things more accessible)
The past week has been spent organising an Instagram release day book tour (everyone posts about the same book on a specific day), and that’s been both terrifying and fun. It’s our first one, so it won’t be perfect, but we’re excited for it.
Temporarily fixating on Sanrio characters. I’ve had a minor interest in this for a while, but it has been slowly building up over the last few months. And then I found some “lego-ish” (not official lego, but the same thing) sets. And they’re very cool and cute, but they also connect together! Which I, of course, got very excited about. It didn’t help that I’d accidentally stumbled across LegoTok in December and have been mildly tempted to get myself a Lego set for a while, and these just looked so exciting! (There’s a little train between them all, how cool!!)
I’ve also been watching Hello Kitty’s Furry Tale Theatre on YouTube, which is pretty fun. It’s a lot of fairytales, classics, and… a few other popular movies… done with Hello Kitty and friends. They’re pretty funny. It’s been nice.
Working on Poetry 4, but we’ll come back to that one.
Briefly deciding I could start a business. This included coming up with a whole heap of ideas for it, drafting a business plan, working out the basic costs and possible additional costs, figuring out what licences and permits we would need…
and then I had things on three days in a row (5 hours, 2 hours, less than 3 hours), and was reminded that this idea is extremely unlikely because it would require me to be able to work full-time, at least for the first few months, and I can’t do that. Going out three days in a row, even for such short periods, had the same effect on my body as mowing the lawn.
It’s a pretty cool idea, and I’d love to make it happen, but realistically… it’s incredibly unlikely. Especially when I’d be doing it all pretty much alone.
In short, referring back to my initial statement: it’s been hectic. And I’m sure I’ve left a lot out.
Reading UpdatesWho Could Love You, Astor Price? by Amy Jane Lehan
4/5 stars
This book has everything I hope for in a novel including decent writing, a clear plot, and emotional devastation. Seriously, if you’re looking to get your heart wrecked, this is a great book for that.
I really enjoyed reading this book. It definitely broke my heart on several occasions, and had me desperate to see how the main character would pull through, if she would find what she needed and get the help she deserved.
(full review)
The Dare by Natasha Preston
3/5 stars
This one is very slow to start in comparison to the author’s other books.
I’m not sure I liked this one as much as the others. It did something different and was definitely unique and an interesting change, but the overall tone of the book felt a bit off and it just didn’t hit for me like they usually do.
It was still a fun read, and the plot twists at the end had me yelling.
Dark and Shallow Lies by Ginny Myers Sain
4/5 stars
I honestly have a lot of mixed feelings about this book, and I don’t really know how to explain most of them.
For the first ~75% of this book, it felt like a firm 3 stars, but then in the last 50 pages it was like “Hey, actually, I’m a 4”. The final third, or maybe a quarter (I wasn’t taking notes), of the book also felt like it was written by a different author. Up to that point, the writing style had been quite clunky, but then it suddenly just… stopped.
Things I enjoyed about this book: the characters, their connections to each other, the way those connections came out piece by piece as necessary, the lingering ominous feeling that smothers you throughout the entire book, the connections between past and present and the way they gradually line up, the vibes, some of the descriptions.
Things I didn’t like about the book: the way people kept jumping to conclusions based on the smallest detail and refused to acknowledge there might be more to the story, the clunky writing style in the first two thirds of the book (lots of short sentences, things split into 3 sentences that could have been one, awkward phrasing), that a couple of major details were obvious from very early in (however, I did like that those details had additional things to them that were not obvious), the ending, I guess?
My issue with the ending isn’t the way it ended, but that it doesn’t actually tell us anything. And I don’t mean that it’s an open ending meant for interpretation. I mean it was only half there, and a lot of details were brushed over or not acknowledged at all.
It was an interesting read, and some of the descriptions were quite beautiful, very atmospheric, and really drew you into the book.
Rock Paper Killers by Alexia Mason
1/5 stars
This was… kinda awful. I picked it up because I saw a YA mystery thriller with a fun name and an interesting description. But I had a lot of issues with this book between the poor writing, irrelevant details, loose ends, and nothing happening until the last 20 pages.
(full review)
Run by Kody Keplinger
4/5 stars
This was an enjoyable read, and it was a good read, and it was a fun read… but I also feel somewhat neutral about it. There wasn’t anything super memorable to comment on.
Though, it did make me cry, which is a key factor in a good book.
“Working on Poetry 4, but we’ll come back to that one.”
Okay, so… “working on” is being used fairly loosely here. But I am closer than I was before. Which is good considering it’s supposed to be released at the end of this month… We’ll see.
Would you like to hear the title?
Okay, actually, I’ve just checked my previous update and I never actually told you the release date, did I? Pfft, well. Poetry 4, The Memories Became Rust, is expected to release on March 31st.
Again, have I finished writing it? … No.
Have I even started the illustrations? … also no.
But I still think there’s a chance. It’ll be fine.
I’m supposed to be releasing a collected edition with these four books in April. That is looking less likely, because there’s a lot of additional work I need to do for that one, but I haven’t given up on it yet.
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