Writerly Bundle #26: Internecine, The Feast of Starlight, & Mirkwood

Welcome to this week's Writerly Bundle! A post where I hope to inspire you with three of the world's greatest things: music, words, and tea.

This tea is blended after Mirkwood, so I had to make this last Writerly Bundle Hobbit-themed!

So Your Character Has Anxiety ... Featuring Katelyn @ On Writing, Life, & MBTI

I have experienced an anxiety attack three times. All weren't fun experiences. One was completely random on a train where a guy made me nervous, and I was just overcome by fear. The other two were shortly after my car accident in April. Having fear grip you in a way that you can't shake for fifteen minutes to a half hour is well ... scary. It's hard to imagine dealing with anxiety on a regular basis. The first time I'd ever become aware of anxiety was while writing the Hunger Games, but anxiety became real after seeing Iron Man 3 and watching Tony Stark struggle with severe anxiety after what happened to him in New York City.

So Your Character Is ... is an on going series where I interview or talk about myself about different people groups, countries, etc. for writing more accurate characters. This month has a special of edition of So Your Character Is ... where Katelyn is gracious enough to talk about her anxiety. I commend her for her honesty and I'm very happy to have her today on the blog. 

Let's welcome Katelyn!

The Sound of My Thinking Army Tag, The Starlight Blogger Award, & the Text Tag

It's time for this month's group of tags! I'm doing three at the same time, so I can get through them all. Thank you Caroline Meek @ Of Stars and Ink-Stained Things for tagging me in the Sound of the Thinking Army Tag, Sara Letourneau @ Her Official Website and Blog for tagging me in the Starlight Blogger Award, and Erin @ Acoustic Erin for letting me steal the Text Tag. Let's get started!

A Book Review of the Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater

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Every year, Blue Sargent stands next to her clairvoyant mother as the soon-to-be dead walk past. Blue never sees them--until this year, when a boy emerges from the dark and speaks to her.

His name is Gansey, a rich student at Aglionby, the local private school. Blue has a policy of staying away from Aglionby boys. Known as Raven Boys, they can only mean trouble.

But Blue is drawn to Gansey, in a way she can't entirely explain. He is on a quest that has encompassed three other Raven Boys: Adam, the scholarship student who resents the privilege around him; Ronan, the fierce soul whose emotions range from anger to despair; and Noah, the taciturn watcher who notices many things but says very little.

For as long as she can remember, Blue has been warned that she will cause her true love to die. She doesn't believe in true love, and never thought this would be a problem. But as her life becomes caught up in the strange and sinister world of the Raven Boys, she's not so sure anymore.

Writerly Bundle #25: Fuliginous, Last Adolescence, & Imperial Gold Buds

Welcome to this week's Writerly Bundle! A post where I hope to inspire you with three of the world's greatest things: music, words, and tea.

I was thinking of what fandoms the word "Imperial" makes me think of and the next one I think of after The Emperor's New Groove (which I did a while back) is Empire of Britannia from Code Geass, thus this week's theme!

Writing Lessons from Movies: Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron

Any horse lover born in the nineties has watched this movie. It's basically the old west version of Black Beauty, but you have to love Spirit's well spirit and the fantastic soundtrack by Hans Zimmer and Bryan Adams. Yes, "You Can't Take Me" is playing in my head while writing this. This touching story recounts the tale of a wild mustang and his adventure after being captured by the military to be used in the cavalry. While watching this movie recently, I noticed a lot of great points this story has for writing an animal's point of view. I thought this could be incredibly useful post if you're writing from the point of view of a real life animal or if you're writing in the head of a mythical beast perhaps.  

Warning: Some spoilers.

Interview with Harlowe (Starbloods)!

Harlowe

Me:

Hey, everyone! It's time for this month's character interview! This month's is from an antihero character from my high fantasy series Starbloods named Harlowe. You can read a bit more about him in his bio before we start. Thank you to everyone who submitted questions! Let's get to the interview. *turns to Harlowe*

Writerly Bundle #24: Eldritch, The Spark/Dragon's Flight, & North Winds

Welcome to this week's Writerly Bundle! A post where I hope to inspire you with three of the world's greatest things: music, words, and tea.

Today's Writerly Bundle is themed after King's Quest VII, one of the games from my favorite game series. ^ ^ I got inspired because the land of this game is called Eldritch. :)

So Your Character is From Algeria ... Featuring Ahmina Dahman + Kawther @ The Villain Library

It's time for this month's So Your Character is From Another Country! This is a monthly or bimonthly segment where I interview lovely volunteers from around the world to give you a firsthand account of being a citizen of their respective country. I'm hoping to encourage international diversity, break stereotypes, and give writers a crash course on how to write a character from these different places on our planet. If you haven't checked out last week's So Your Character is From Liberia ... be sure to hop on over there and give it a read!

Algeria is another country I haven't given much though to until this post, but Amina and Kawther have really widened my understanding of this part of Africa!

Beautiful People #19: Elasa

It's time for this month's Beautiful People! Yay! This is a link-up hosted by Paperfury and Further Up and Further In where you answer questions about your characters. I participated in Beautiful People #1, #2, #3 and the villain special last year. And I've done Beautiful People Author Edition, Beautiful People Valentine Edition, Beautiful People #7, Beautiful People Sibling Edition, Beautiful People #9, Beautiful People: Parental Edition, Beautiful People #11, Beautiful People: Friendship Edition, Beautiful People #13: Caleb, Beautiful People #14: Writerly Resolutions and Goals, Beautiful People: Valentine's Edition, Beautiful People #16, Beautiful People #17, and Beautiful People Childhood Edition. This link-up has been just so helpful with character development. 

Since I'm officially going to do Starbloods for NaNoWriMo, I want to focus my BPs and interviews on characters from my long-neglected high fantasy series. Today I'm doing BP with Elasa (rhymes with Mufasa) who is one of the three main character of the series. She's the chosen female of a pair for a prophecy that has a pair of chosen ones every generation, but all of the chosen ones have failed up to this point. Elasa is 5' 2", a Lady of a Provence in the Renaissance period land of Calsidor, and suffers from fibromyalgia. She's had an interview and a Beautiful People in the past, but not one that's focused exclusively on her so I'm excited about this. She's in the same story as Harlowe from last month. If you'd like to participate in this link-up yourself, check out either Paperfury or Further Up and Further In to see how. Here we go!

A Book Review of Eye of Minds by James Dashner

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 The VirtNet offers total mind and body immersion, and the more hacking skills you have, the more fun it is. Why bother following the rules when it’s so easy to break them? But some rules were made for a reason. Some technology is too dangerous to fool with. And one gamer has been doing exactly that, with murderous results. .

     The government knows that to catch a hacker, you need a hacker. And they’ve been watching Michael. If he accepts their challenge, Michael will need to go off the VirtNet grid, to the back alleys and corners of the system human eyes have never seen—and it’s possible that the line between game and reality will be blurred forever.

Writerly Bundle #23: Silvan, Light of Nibel, & Golden Snail

Welcome to this week's Writerly Bundle! A post where I hope to inspire you with three of the world's greatest things: music, words, and tea.

After listening to the soundtrack, I knew I had to theme one of these posts after this enchanting, but extremely difficult game Ori and the Blind Forest.

So Your Character is From Liberia ... Featuring Lucy Buller @ Rybrynn's Random Scribblings

It's time for this month's So Your Character is From Another Country! This is a monthly or bimonthly segment where I interview lovely volunteers from around the world to give you a firsthand account of being a citizen of their respective country. I'm hoping to encourage international diversity, break stereotypes, and give writers a crash course on how to write a character from these different places on our planet. If you haven't checked out last month's So Your Character is From the Philippines ... be sure to hop on over there and give it a read!

Liberia is honestly not a country I've thought much about, but when Lucy volunteered to be interviewed, I was very excited to learn more about West Africa!

Fourth Bloggoversary Celebration!

I almost totally forgot that today is this blogs fourth bloggoversary! Today my blog is four years old! My past bloggoversaries have either been nonexistent or meh, so I'm hoping to get this year's right. Four years ago today, I decided to create my own blog to help my writing platform, but I had no idea the journey it would take me. Blogging has really helped me become more committed and more consistent with my writing and has even earned me positions as an editor for Geeks Under Grace and a staff writer for Geekdom House. It's truly grown me as a person and a writer.

Writerly Bundle #22: Autoschediasm, The Cheshire Cat, & the Jabberwocky

Welcome to this week's Writerly Bundle! A post where I hope to inspire you with three of the world's greatest things: music, words, and tea.

The tea is called the Jabberwocky thus this post must be Alice in Wonderland themed. Nuff said.

Keeping Morality in Fiction: Are you sacrificing your role models for character conflict?

Conflict is an essential part of story. No good story doesn't have conflict. It is what creates intrigue and keeps a consumer flipping pages or clicking the next episode to find out what happens. Conflict among characters definitely motivates a reader/viewer to keep watching when there's a broken relationship or a turn in a character's arch. But in our pursuit of this juicy conflict are we sacrificing having role models? 

Questions for Harlowe (Starbloods)!

Because of the overwhelming response with Harlowe in last month's BP, I've decided to interview him this month! He is an antihero character from my high fantasy series that I'm debating on rewriting for NaNoWriMo. Decisions ... Let me tell you a bit about him!

Harlowe is a twenty-two-year-old shapeshifting sorcerer. In his world Stars are sentient beings and he is half Star, known in his world as Starbloods, but his other half is shapeshifter, leaving him without a trace of human blood. His born abilities are shapeshifting into a hound, telekinesis, telepathy, and the ability to control burning starlight. However, at the coercion of the evil full Star Vanmoriel, he can access forbidden abilities as well. One of these was the expansion of his shapeshifting abilities, allowing him to change into any form he can desire--at the the expense of his sanity. Daily, Harlowe struggles with the dozens of minds from his different forms with the real possibility of losing himself among them.