Wonderful Word Wednesdays: Inviolable

It's Wonderful Word Wednesday again! Do you as a writer ever struggle finding that perfect word to describe something or you want to shake your writing up with some new words? Each Wednesday I post hand-picked descriptive words for writers and other vocabulary nerds out there. ;) 

inviolable

adjective

1.) prohibiting violation; secure from destruction, violence, infringement, or desecration:

an inviolable sanctuary; an inviolable promise.

2.) incapable of being violated; incorruptible; unassailable: inviolable secrecy.

Example Sentence: A secret organization provides an inviolable home for many graftings.

Brian and Ashlyn are graftings. 

Have you seen or used this word before? What do you think of it?

If you liked this post, come back every Saturday for more writing advice, character interviews, book reviews and more! On Sundays I have Soundtrack Sundays where I post a new score piece, Tuesdays are Tea Tuesdays with tea reviews, Wednesdays I have Wonderful Word Wednesdays where I post a new vocabulary word, and Fridays are Fan Fridays where I post tags and other goodies. To help support my dream to be an author follow this blog, like me on Facebook, watch me on deviantART, and follow me on Pinterest and Twitter. If you want to know more about my books check out them out here. Thank you! :)

Click here for last week's word!

Tea Tuesday: Kaylee

I'm not really a coffee person. I prefer tea, and I know a lot of fellow writers love tea, too. But have you ever wanted to break out of the Early Grey or English Breakfast norm and try something new? Well, let me help you find some cool new teas! If you need a little hot and flavorful boost to help you reach your writing goal or you're just a lover of tea or you'd like to try some tea but aren't fond of the stereotypical types, these Tea Tuesday posts are for you.

This weeks tea is ... 

*drum roll*

Kaylee

How I found it: I'm back with another fandom set from Adagio Teas. I decided to mix it up this month and get teas that are from two different fandoms. Whaaaaaaaaaaat? I have the last four Firefly Teas from Adagio Teas: Wash, Kaylee, Shepherd Book, and Simon Tam. Then the last tea will be Patched aka the Nick Fury blend from the Avengers set. Don't miss out on the other teas I've reviewed from these sets! Firefly: Serenitea, Captain Mal, Inara, Zoe, Jayne, and River Tam. Hero's Recovery (the Avengers): Exiled, Playboy, Stars & Stripes, Mean & Green, Double Agent, and Sharp Shooter.

This is the same site I bought the Avengers set,Sherlock set, Tolkien set, Avatar: the Last Airbender set,  Doctor Who set, Attack on Titan set, RWBY set, Divergent set, Firefly, and Fruits Basket set from!

The Tea: At first sniff, I knew this tea was going to be amazing. It smells very strongly of strawberries with the bitterness of dark chocolate near the end. When brewed it, the teas the color of Kaylee's dirty blonde hair. It tastes very strongly of the wild strawberry tea, cream tea, rose hips, raspberry leaves, and strawberry pieces. The flavor is very girly and floral with a sprinkle of romance. This made me think of the sweet and adorable person Kaylee is. She's always smiling and she always likes to see the best in people. She's endearing. 

The aftertaste is a bit bitter from the Valentines tea which contains strawberry, rose, and dark chocolate flavors with cocoa nibs. This reminds me of Kaylee's greasy mechanic side. She may be sweet, but she'd not afraid to get down into the bowels of Serenity to make sure her girl is doing well. I think Kaylee would much enjoy this tea. It suits her perfectly. 

The tea does taste a bit fancy.

Serving Recommendations: I steeped this tea for six minutes and added sugar and cream. 

How much is it and where can you get it? You can find this tea at the Adagio website. I bought this tea in a sample set which was about $22 including shipping and you get a goodly amount of tea since you only need about a teaspoon per cup. Some of these teas you can buy individually for about $10 a pouch or $4 for a sample tin.

So how good is it? I really enjoyed this tea. Four stars!

Have you tried this tea? What did you think of it? Have you seen Firefly?

Bonus! If you are a first-time Adagio customer I can send you a $5 giftcard! Ask in the comments for details! (This is no joke and no catch I seriously can. It's part of the amazingness of Adagio Teas)

If you liked this post, come back every Saturday for more writing advice, character interviews, book reviews and more! On Sundays I have Soundtrack Sundays where I post a new score piece, Tuesdays are Tea Tuesdays with tea reviews, Wednesdays I have Wonderful Word Wednesdays where I post a new vocabulary word, and Fridays are Fan Fridays where I post tags and other goodies. To help support my dream to be an author follow this blog, like me on Facebook, watch me on deviantART, and follow me on Pinterest and Twitter. If you want to know more about my books check out them out here. Thank you! :)

Click here for last week's tea!

Soundtrack Sundays: Danny (Broadchurch)

It's Soundtrack Sunday again! The day where I post awesome music to write to or just listen to for pleasure if you're a fellow soundtrack junkie. I recently decided to watch Broadchurch (mostly because David Tennant is in). A friend recommended it a while back and now I'm finally getting to it. It's a very emotion-heavy show about the devastation of a child's death on a family, the investigators, and the child's home town. 

The soundtrack is just beautiful. The strings carry such heavy emotion. This piece is quite heartbreaking since it centers around the victim Danny Lattimer--and yet there's a spark of hope at the end as the music picks up. This is perfect for a death scene or another sort of tragedy across many genres whether it be fantasy or sci-fi or contemporary or historical. It's a very versatile piece. You can listen to more epic music in my Soundtrack Sundays YouTube playlist.

Have you heard this piece before? What do you think of it? Have you seen Broadchurch?

If you liked this post, come back every Saturday for more writing advice, character interviews, book reviews and more! On Sundays I have Soundtrack Sundays where I post a new score piece, Tuesdays are Tea Tuesdays with tea reviews, Wednesdays I have Wonderful Word Wednesdays where I post a new vocabulary word, and Fridays are Fan Fridays where I post tags and other goodies. To help support my dream to be an author follow this blog, like me on Facebook, watch me on deviantART, and follow me on Pinterest and Twitter. If you want to know more about my books check out them out here. Thank you! :)

Click here for last week's Soundtrack Sunday!

Writing Lessons from Movies: Mulan

Mulan is one of my favorite Disney movies. I'm a firm believer that most of the good Disney movies were made in the 90s and early 2000s--and I'm not just saying that because that was when I was growing up. There was some awesome in writing in many of those releases and today we're highlighting the film of Disney's first Asian princess!

Warning: There's probably spoilers.

1.) Character Skills Foreshadowing - Despite many of Mulan's shortcomings to most people her society, she has many strengths like bravery, cunning, compassion, and love for her family. This is shown early on in the film during the "Honor to Us All" sequence. During this we see how Mulan is going forward with the Matchmaker Meeting besides being nervous because she loves her family and wants their respect, we see her making the winning move on the Pi-Sho game for the two old guys, and her defending the young girl from the bullies. 

These are all attributes we see later on in the film, but they are foreshadowed early on so they don't seem to come out of the blue. It would feel awkward if Mulan suddenly decided to shoot the mountain instead of Shan Yu with the cannon if all you'd seen of her was her klutzy side, wouldn't it?

How this can be applied to writing: Like in Mulan, your character's skills and attributes should be foreshadowed early on in the story. Not only does this endear your readers to the character, this makes the character seem more natural and logical when she/he uses one of these skills later.

Not this cannon sequence. The other one.

2.) Useful Sidekicks - Many times Disney has random sidekick characters but they don't do much but give the child audience a few extra laughs (Sven from Frozen and Pascal (however cute he is) from Tangled for instance). Mushu and Cri-Kee didn't follow suit. Mushu was essential in helping Mulan survive as a soldier and Cri-Kee helped Mushu in his endeavors like being the mouth piece for his soldier disguise. They were important to the story's plot. 

How this can be applied to writing: Make sure your sidekick characters aka secondary characters are important to your plot. Can the plot do without them? Then often that means that they're not needed. Having too many characters can make the story seem cluttered. Every character needs a purpose however cute or funny they are. 

Did I mention Mushu is hilarious?

3.) Age Appropriate Content - Let's face it, Mulan contains a lot of thinly-veiled mature content such as naked people bathing in a pond, Mulan and Shang getting severely wounded, and an entire battalion plus a village wiped out. But notice how they portrayed all of this content genuinely (Because we've all seen the kid's animated film where we've said, "That person would have totally been killed if this was an adult film.") without it being exceedingly gory or sexual, thus film is appropriate for its intended audience without being explicit. 

How this can be applied to writing: It is indeed possible to write a book that is genuine to how bad the world is without making it so explicit it alienates a good swath of your potential audience. I wrote an entire post about this concept for further explanation.

A few thousand Huns were just wiped out here.

4.) Circularity - Circularity is the concept of a theme or action used earlier in the story making a full circle back to the end of the story. This adds a neat touch. In this film, the concept having to taken on the identity of another gender to accomplish a task comes in early on with Mulan disguising herself as a man to replace her father. Then this comes in later when the soldiers have to disguise themselves as women to sneak into the palace to save the Emperor. 

How this can be applied to writing: Can you have circularity in your story? This isn't an essential element, but it is pretty cool when it's included. 

This part was so funny as well. XD

5.) Same Goals Different Motivations - Both Mulan and Mushu want to save China, but for totally different reasons. Mulan wanted to do it to save her country and especially to save her ailing father. Mushu wanted to do it so he could get his position back. Like Mushu says "You wanted to do it save your family, I just wanted to do it to save myself." This was an interesting parallel as we saw the two character pursue their goals in different ways. 

How this can be applied to writing: This is another fun element to have in a story. It can often be done with the protagonist and the antagonist or with two good characters like in Mulan. Doing this can also create some great conflict. And what's a good story without conflict?

From the scene where the three characters realized
that pretended to be something else to reach their goals.

We often like films, but we don't know exactly why. When we break them down like this, it is easier to see the workings of what makes a good story. Mulan is one of the many well-written stories out there. I hope you can glean something from its attributes!

Love this visual with the make up.

Have you seen Mulan? Have you noticed these writing aspects? What movies have you noticed have good writing? Let's geek out together!

You may also like:

Writing Lessons from Movies: the Lord of the Rings

Writing Lessons from Movies: Jumanji

Writing Lessons from Anime: RWBY

Writing Lessons from Anime: My Neighbor Totoro

Writing Lessons from TV Shows: Avatar: The Last Airbender

Beautiful Books: Introduce Your Novel - Subsapien: Hybrid

I've been so excited for this post! I did Beautiful Books last year with Red Hood and it was so fun! To get in the know with that, check out Beautiful Books #1, #2, and #3! Beautiful Books is a link-up that goes on during NaNoWriMo to show the progress of writing during that time. Basically it's the time to show off your novels.

I'm again being a crazy person and doing NaNoWriMo for the second year in the row. I feel like I lost a few (more) marbles last year, but it truly is a great thing to get books written that you've been procrastinating on. This particular book I've had in my mind for around seven years and now it's finally going to get written! It is the third book of my four-book science-fiction series Subsapien called Hybrid! I'm so excited for NaNo this year because I'm writing with my awesome writing buddy Cassia from Dimensions of my Universe. She also helped me plot this book. So pumped! If you'd like to participate in the link-up check out Paper Fury and Further Up and Further In!

How did you come up with the idea for your novel, and how long have you had the idea?
Like I said in the intro, I've had this book in my head for a long time. I came up for the idea as I was expanding on my Subsapien universe. I love writing series and I tend to think in them so this book came naturally to me as my ideas culminated. You can check out how I came up with the series idea in a post I did for the first book.

Why are you excited to write this novel?
Because I'm finally getting it out of my head! It's about time! So much awesomeness happens in this series. All of the events in the previous two books is coming to a head and it's paving the way for the final book of the series. There is action and emotion and creepiness and my characters I just want to hug and squeeze.

What is your novel about, and what is the title?
I mentioned the title above: Subsapien: Hybrid. The series is called Subsapien and the title of this book is Hybrid.

And here is what it's about (since this is the third book of the series I can't do official synopsis because it would be riddled with spoilers):

Subsapien: Hybrid is set in the future where Domes cover a small percentage of North and South America to protect the united continents from a gas outside them. Bryce and Matt are brothers with cheetah abilities given to them by the scientific company Rota Enterprises in labs where they've been raised all of their lives in cruel conditions.

In the first book, the boys were separated by the company and they've been trying to find each other in the first and second books of the series. Now they finally have the means to, but the company is making a move to reveal the purpose for their half animal creations to the world. This would effect them and their other subsapien friends--and could be an opportunity to stop the cruelty against their race.

Sum up your characters in one word each. (Feel free to add pictures!)
Subsapien: Hybrid has a lot of characters. Here are the biggest ones!

Bryce: Passionate (Check out his Beautiful People!)

Matt: Compassionate (Check out his character interview!)

Nox: Alone. (Character interview coming next month!)
(Nox is actually 13, but this is the closest pic of someone I could find who looks like him.
Just picture this dude as a young teen and that's Nox.)

Caleb Knight: Faithful (Check out his Beautiful People!)

Pro Jamerson: Feisty (Check out her character interview!) 

Cynara Parks: Longing (Check out her character interview!)

Izzy: Innocent

Ingrid: Kind (Check out her character interview!)

Emil: Loyal (Check out his character interview!)

Brian: Genius (Check out his Beautiful People!)

Ashlyn: Thief

Sting: Insane (Interview coming next week! Ask him some questions!)

Serra: Vacillating (Check out her character interview!) 

Able: Used (Check out his character interview!)

Judah Mitchell: Manipulative (Check out his character interview!)

Lio Syers: Hardened

Which character(s) do you think will be your favourite to write? Tell us about them!
Definitely Bryce and Matt. I love their brotherly bond. They're so close even though their so different in so many ways. They love each other very much and their devotion to one another is so inspiring to me. I just want to hug and squeeze them. ^ ^

What is your protagonist’s goal, and what stands in the way?
Bryce and Matt's goals are to find each other. Nox's goal is to get out of the labs and protect Izzy, the little girl he was entrusted to take care of. What gets in their way is mostly Rota Enterprises. The company wants to keep its little lab subjects in check so it uses some highly-skilled subsapiens to try to stop my main character subsapiens. You can meet one of those highly skilled subsapiens in his interview next Friday and if you'd like to ask him a question he's still up for a few more!

Where is your novel set? (Show us pictures if you have them!)
It is set in the United Americas (North America and South America combined) which is covered partially by Domes. The characters also go to a creepy abandoned lab, underground tunnels, the big capital city called the Prime Dome, and snowy mountains.

This sort of looks like the Domes but with a regular earth sky and no tower in the middle.

Creepy abandoned L.G.R. lab.

Underground city tunnels.

This is somewhat what the Prime Dome City looks like.

Rocky Mountains.

What is the most important relationship your character has?
Bryce and Matt have a strong brotherly relationship like mentioned before. Matt has an important relationship with God since he's a Christian. Nox has an important relationship with Izzy.

How does your protagonist change by the end of the novel?
Bryce's struggle throughout the book is dealing with his past demons and by the end of the book he finally conquers them. Matt struggle is can be a Christian even when people don't consider him human? And he eventually finds more assurance in his faith. Nox begins not wanting to become close to anyone because he's lost or been backstabbed by anyone he's ever cared about and the end he learns to have faith in friends again.

What themes are in your book? How do you want your readers to feel when the story is over?
I'm still unsure of the main themes yet. I usually discover those as I write the book. But I do want to leave the readers with ways to feel more confident in their faith.

The Subsapien series as a whole deals with the question: Who is human and who isn't? Is one life is more important than another? In society today, with things like abortion and euthanasia legalized, people have the power to determine an often helpless life as worthless. Many Subsapien characters are ones that were aborted, but survived. Subsapien's overall theme is all life is precious no matter who or what you are. I know this got really serious, but this is a topic I'm really passionate about. I'm not looking for an argument I'm just answering a question on this thing. XD

BONUS! Tell us your 3 best pieces of advice for others trying to write a book in a month.

1.) Plan. It's next to impossible to pants a book in one month. Believe me I've tried--and failed.

2.) Write in batches. 10 minute sprints are my best friend whether it's on my own or in word wars. Sometimes it's easy for one's mind to turn into mush (and for one's fingers to start killing them) if you're writing for an hour straight.

3.) Make a playlist. Having a playlist with music that fits your books is really inspiring. If you need some possible pieces for said playlist, check out my Soundtrack Sunday posts. ^ ^


Well that was fun. I'm really excited to let you all know about my Subsapien series. Happy NaNoWriMo!

Are you doing NaNoWriMo? Are you writing a novel? Are you participating in this link-up? Post your link in the comments so I can see!

You may also like:

Beautiful People: Bryce

Beautiful People #13: Caleb

Beautiful People Sibling Edition: Bryce & Matt

Beautiful People Friendship Edition: Bryce & Emil

Interview with Judah Mitchell (Subsapien)

If you liked this post, come back every Saturday for more writing advice, character interviews, book reviews and more! On Sundays I have Soundtrack Sundays where I post a new score piece, Tuesdays are Tea Tuesdays with tea reviews, Wednesdays I have Wonderful Word Wednesdays where I post a new vocabulary word, and Fridays are Fan Fridays where I post tags and other goodies. To help support my dream to be an author follow this blog, like me on Facebook, watch me on deviantART, and follow me on Pinterest and Twitter. If you want to know more about my books check out them out here. Thank you! :)

Wonderful Word Wednesdays: Accouterment

It's Wonderful Word Wednesday again! Do you as a writer ever struggle finding that perfect word to describe something or you want to shake your writing up with some new words? Each Wednesday I post hand-picked descriptive words for writers and other vocabulary nerds out there. ;) 

accouterment

noun

1. personal clothing, accessories, etc.

2. the equipment, excluding weapons and clothing, of a soldier.

Example Sentence: Mor made certain to have the necessary accouterment before leaving for the mission.

Mor has a harness like this for her duel axes.

Have you seen or used this word before? What do you think of it?

If you liked this post, come back every Saturday for more writing advice, character interviews, book reviews and more! On Sundays I have Soundtrack Sundays where I post a new score piece, Tuesdays are Tea Tuesdays with tea reviews, Wednesdays I have Wonderful Word Wednesdays where I post a new vocabulary word, and Fridays are Fan Fridays where I post tags and other goodies. To help support my dream to be an author follow this blog, like me on Facebook, watch me on deviantART, and follow me on Pinterest and Twitter. If you want to know more about my books check out them out here. Thank you! :)

Click here for last week's word!