2025 Reading Challenge Update - May

Yall, listen.  I'm going to get straight to it.  Pick up Dial A for Aunties.  Technically, I finished it today but there was so little left that I figured I'd count it for May anyway.  I laughed, I cringed, I got angry, everything.  It was hilarious.  I saw that its in the works for a movie I believe and I hope it comes through.  Because when you end up accidentally killing your blind date who else are you going to call but your business partners, aka your mom and aunties, the night before your biggest and fanciest wedding gig yet.  I want to describe it as if the movie 'The Hangover' meshed with a soap opera spoof like 'Jane the Virgin'.  It was great. 10 out of 10 recommend.

Green books have eluded me once more.  I had hope for a second with The Amalfi Curse but when I put it on there it was obviously more blue than green.  I thought I was going to have to get creative with the black slot but Never Lie seemed more white to me.

That was another good read.  A thriller with twists.  I'm going to be reading more from Freida McFadden.

Two new letters claimed for the A-Z's.  Love to see it.  Still have quite the ways to go but I'm hopeful.  Pretty sure I'll be able to get the Titles done before the Authors.  But seriously, do they not make green covers?  Yeesh.  Suggestions PLEASE.

2025 Reading Challenge Update - January

 I hope I can keep up with this because I think its going to look really cool by the end of the year.  I could probably tweak it a little but I like these.  I also decided to do author names for the A to Z because it sounded fun.  And I know Landline is not red but it's not orange either, ok.  I may have to add pink next year.

I think that my top ones would be with Lightlark by Alex Aster or One Way or Another by Kara McDowell.  Lightlark got the part of me that loves a good fantasy magic system.  One Way or Another was just a really cute read and I enjoyed it too. Saying Landline would be cheating because Rainbow Rowell is an old favorite author of mine and I just wanted to relisten to it on audio.  Three of these were listened to as audio if anyone likes to know that.

Also would like to suggest you look up books before picking them up, especially if your sensitive to certain themes or subjects.  Just a heads up.

My 2025 Reading Challenges

 I found someone on TikTok, Rusty Creek Designs, who makes book journals.  They put so many cool ways to organize books that you have read and books that you plan to read.  A TBR section, a place to describe your rating system, bookshelves to color in with the titles you've read, and so many challenge and tracker pages.  It's such a cute design and great idea.  I can't spend the money on the journal right now but thought a couple of the challenges would be fun to try regardless.

_________________________________

CHALLENGES

A to Z - Read a book starting with the beginning of each letter of the alphabet.

'Read the Rainbow' - Read all the different colors in book covers.  Rusty Creek Designs has many shades of colors in their book.  I think I'm going to stick to Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Purple, Black, and White.

_________________________________

Pretty straight forward.  A simple but fun way to keep track of what I read this year.  What challenges are you taking on this year?  Have a goal number of books for this year?

We Listen and We Dont Judge....

 We're not going to talk about the six year gap.  We're not going to talk about the lack of reading and writing that has been going on here.  Let's just agree to continue like nothing happened, mmkay? Great.

2025 is actually looking up for reading and writing productivity.  The writer's group I went to that closed during Covid is finally coming back! I'm going to be writing for them so I'm bringing the blog back too.  Why not?  BookTok has relit the reading fire for a lot of people, I think I'd include myself in that as well.  There are some reading challenges that I found there and I'll keep track of them here.

Do you have any challenges I should try?  Any books I should add to my TBR?  Let's swap ideas.

Writing A to Z

So I remember last year when I was on twitter and I was always seeing #atozchallenge at the end of tweets.  This year I FINALLY caught on to it before the event started.

Turns out that the A to Z Challenge takes place every April where you take it upon yourself to write a blog post every day except Sunday, which happens to be 26 days.  Not only that but you need to choose a word for each one to use as a prompt and they must be alphabetical order (Day 1 - prompt that starts with A, Day 2 - B, etc...).  That happens to conveniently give one letter for each day!

I'm going to go for it this year!  It sounds like fun and so why not?  Now the only thing is to figure out what to write...  Lol.  Think I might try a story.  Just post a little every day until I get to the end on the last day.  This is going to take some more thought.

Any of you giving it a go?  Returning for another try?  Any tips or tricks to the trade you're willing to offer?  I'm all ears.

Pressure of Progress

If you're anything like me, progress scares the mess out of you.  It makes you uncomfortable.  Most of all it's really hard.

It's a giant cliff that you need to get to the bottom of and the only option you have is to jump.  You've come to the point where it feels like it's now or never and it makes you freeze.

You've decided that this was the path in life that you were going to take and then it led you to this cliff.  You tell yourself all the things you're going to do, you believe in it enough to tell everyone around that you're going to do it.

But you don't.

You took a risk coming to this cliff and everyone knows now.  You tell them how your getting ready for the jump, but you feel embarrassed because it's been the same words over and over again.  Now you question if it was worth it.  You wonder if you'll fly or fall.  You wonder if you shouldn't just turn around and try a different direction.  Until others start to say the same.  Then you realize how important this is to you.  They tell you different variations of 'Go back', 'Do this', and 'It's the wrong way'.

That's when the fire was rekindled.

You want to prove them wrong.  You want to prove yourself right.  You want to take that one step that will most likely change it all.

But you chicken out.

Now you're fighting with yourself.  Are you scared or just lazy?  You make countless running starts only to pull up short and you're left pulling reasons out of thin air that you use like a veil to cover up whatever the really reason is.  Then you're just left tired.

And that's when you get tired of being tired.

You're tired of standing still.  You're tired of wondering what would happen.  You're tired of worrying that you'll miss your chance and have to ask yourself 'what if'.

So you run for that cliff, full speed this time, and don't show any signs of stopping.  You don't know exactly where it goes or if you'll be flying or falling but you only hope you'll be too busy enjoying the rush to find out.

'Glee'-ful Inspiration

I'm watching the first show of the second season of the Glee Project right now, because apparently I'm Glee obsessed.  The Glee Project is all about the auditions they hold for new characters on Glee and I like what they keep saying about the creator, Ryan Murphy.  He's not just looking for someone who can sing and dance, he wants someone who makes him want to write a character for them.

Can you imagine writing something in that way?  Holding auditions and then in walks your hero or your protaganist?  Like in a for real, reach out and touch them, kind of way.  It has to be surreal, in a way, knowing that you could possibly be using this real person's attitude and personality into a character for your story/film/show.

Do you think you could do that?  I know a lot of people talk about how fun 'people watching' is and how it's a great way to get characters and storylines started.  Have you ever done that?  What about putting someone into a story that you already have going?  That has to be a little trickier seeing as how you already have a set world and now you have to find a good place for them to go.

Hmmm, this sounds like a fun writing prompt.  I may have to spend some time at the mall.  :)

Challenge!!

I had a thought for a post to day but honestly my brain feels like mush. Lol. So instead I wanted to issue a challenge here that a got at my writer's group.

CHALLENGE: Write a 26 word story where every word starts with a different letter. No repeats and it doesn't have to be in alphabetical order.

So this is the first one I did and let me tell you, it's really hard to make sense using 26 words, much less making sure you're not starting with the same letters.


Alpha bears climb down every frostbitten ghastly hill impaitiently jousting kelp loosely mangling, nearly obliterating, part quails refused suddenly tearing under various winds xeroxing your zenith.


Uhhh... yeah, I don't know how I have bears running down kelp strewn hills trampling things that quials don't even want but it completed the challenge! If you want to give it a try put it in the comments!

2011!!

Happy New Year everybody! I hope the first week of 2011 has gone well for you. We had a lot of fun with my family so mine has gone pretty well. But, along with going back to work and school, a lot of people are making resolutions. Since this is the first post of 2011 I thought I’d share some of my writing resolutions here so you can all yell at me if I’m not keeping to it. :) Lol. Here they go:

1. Write more shorts
Writing short stories is how I started writing in general. Lately though, it seems that I haven’t been doing many of them at all. I kind of miss it. So let’s put a number on it. I will write at least 3 shorts this year. Short number one is in progress by the way.

2. Finish editing/write a query letter for my 2009 NaNo novel
It has been sitting there unfinished long enough. Time to fix it up and see what I can do with it!

3. Do a little poetry
I’m going to try to get an internship and the portfolio that I have to fill out asks me to do poetry. I’ve never really tried poetry before. I had to do a couple of high school assignments here and there but really I have no experience in that. So this year that’s going to change too.

So that’s just a few things I want to do this year. What’s some of yours? Have you already gotten started? I have a feeling that 2011 is going to be made of awesome. Whoo!!

A new year could also bring new things to my blog. I have a couple ideas that I’m going to throw out there that could mean more posts. I was thinking about more book reviews and a ‘Poetry Slam Challenge’ series.

I want to do book reviews on random days because when I finish a book I like to do reviews as soon as I can so my idea of it is still fresh. So I figure why not post them as I read them? The ‘Poetry Slam Challenge’ could be every month. You all challenge me with a topic and the type of poem (like a haiku or…uh, well, that’s really the only kind I know. I really, really need to work on this) and I’ll do it and post it. It will help me learn more about poetry and keep my word on my resolution. Hopefully it'll be fun for you guys to be involved and see how I do with your challenge too. Maybe you could even do it with me and I’ll post a link to poems for that month’s challenge.

Let me know what you think. See you next post. :)

Come on down! You’re our next contestant on the Price is Write!

(Before I start, I want to say that I’m so sorry for being late on posting this! I went out of town and had the best weekend taking pictures of and with a couple awesome bands that I totally ran out of time.)

I became a fan of reality shows recently. There’s a few of them that I try to remember to watch online when they post them (because my dad doesn’t really like them so I can’t watch them on tv). What I noticed during my video surfing is that there is a game show for everyone. Almost. I’ve seen shows for artists, gamers, chefs, designers, and singers, but where is the one for authors?

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think there is one. So that got me thinking, ‘Hey! What’s up with that?!’ Then I thought about it some more and realized that, as insulting as it might sound, writing isn’t that fun to watch. Seriously, I’ve written in public and no one stopped to look at me. I’ve written with at least ten other people around me doing the same and still no one stayed to take pictures. Well, there was one person with a typewriter that I found really cool but that’s beside the point. So I picked my brain a little more and thought about what could make writing interesting to watch and here are some challenges I came up with so far.

Poetry Jam – Contestants must write a poem and perform it in an ‘open mic night’ type of setting.

Children’s Book – Contestants will write a kid’s book and work with an artist to do the illustrations. Kids from different schools will vote on what book they like best and would like to keep in their classroom.

Internet presence – Build the biggest fan base that you can on facebook, twitter, or whatever.

Book trailer – Create a super exciting trailer for any previous or future project.

Book release party – I think this would be the official end of the show event where the winner is named every season. I don’t know about everyone else, but one of the things I think of when I’m daydreaming about the day that my first novel has a date to come to stores is the big ole party I’ll have just before midnight.

These are just a few ideas. Of course we’ll have to switch it up every season so we’ll need more ideas to work with but I’d say this is a good start. If anyone knows someone in the television business (or has a bit more ambition than I do) please feel free to take this idea and run with it. All I ask is that you notify that it’s in the works and invite me to the season finales as a VIP. But we’re still missing a name. How about The Release Date? Authors Unleashed? I don’t know. That’s all I’ve got. How about you? Have any name or competition ideas? Well, while you guys are thinking about that I’ll be working on my acceptance speech for the ‘Greatest Game Show Idea’ award. Don’t worry, you’re all definitely included.