Welcome to Open Book Blog Hop. You can find us every Monday talking about the writing life. I hope you'll check out all the posts: you'll find the links at the bottom of this post.
If you could live in any place, any time, any world, where would you want to live?
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Well, if I can really live in any place, any time, any world, then why would I limit myself to one? Even just the question has my wanderlust aflame. Even with the limits of time and space I currently live within, I want to go everywhere!
But for the sake of discussion, let's pick a few options.
I first became enamored of New Zealand as a child. My family and I attended the World's Fair in Knoxville in 1982. I was 11 years old. We wandered into the exhibit on New Zealand, and images like the one above adorned the walls. Already a fan of wild vistas, I gasped. This attracted the attention of one of the workers, a lovely woman who had been well-selected for her job for her winning personality and ability to wield that charming Kiwi accent to make sure that visitors fell in love with the idea of visiting the place she was from.
Later, in the early 2000s, the Lord of the Rings trilogy was filmed in New Zealand, and watching those films reignited my interest in visiting. I haven't made it there yet, though I still hold out hope. I want a Hobbiton movie set tour as well as time exploring some of the exciting scenery, like volcanoes, geysers, and glaciers.
2. Any Time: late Victorian England and between-the-wars America
Time travel is a tricksy proposition. But we'll assume that I can do so safely, and that my life won't be at risk because of my inappropriate clothing or because I was a woman or a Jewish person in the wrong place and time. I'd also want to avoid any Ray Bradbury situations, where I destroy the world by stepping on a butterfly.
Since I've got two back-burnered projects that are back-burnered because I need to do more research about the time periods before I can continue, I'd be interested in the period between WWI and WWII in Indianapolis (for my historical fiction trilogy based on a family legend, working title Cold Spring) and 1890s rural England (for my Gothic romance, working title The Architect and the Heir).
Visiting would be way more immersive (and probably more fun) then trying to glean the details I want from nonfiction books and internet research.
3. Any World: Wakanda!
If you've been reading this blog, then you already know that I'm a superhero fan.
There are a lot of cool worlds in superhero stories: Themyscira, home of Wonder Woman; Atlantis, home of Aquaman; Krypton, home of Superman. But my very favorite is Wakanda, especially as portrayed in the recent Black Panther movies. Sleek and sophisticated, efficient and beautiful, a utopia of artistry and industry interwoven.
In the films, we don't see much outside the main city, but that city is spectacular. Even a confirmed small-town girl like me would love the chance to explore it.
So, there you go, given the chance to go somewhere, the hardest part would be choosing. I want to go everywhere!
How about you? With all barriers removed, where would you choose to live? I'd love to hear about it in the comments.
Welcome to Open Book Blog Hop. You can find us every Monday talking about the writing life. I hope you'll check out all the posts: you'll find the links at the bottom of this post.
What are your favorite vacation spots and do they ever show up in your books? ____________________
I love traveling. I haven't gotten nearly as much of it as I want (I had kids--and they are expensive and time consuming, LOL), and I want to go everywhere! It might be shorter to make a list of places I don't want to go, than a list of where I want to visit.
Choosing favorites is difficult, but my trip to Ireland last summer was definitely a recent highlight! I'd love to go back.
We'll call this collage "Samantha in Ireland"
So far, I haven't used many completely real places in my fiction. I've used places and elements, but I've mixed them together in ways that aren't actually true.
I know I'll use a lot of the ruins and scenery I saw on this trip to Ireland in my Gothic romance (working title: The Architect and the Heir), but not exactly as they actually exist. It's more about mood and interesting details than actual representation of the places I've been.
Danguire Castle up there in the middle would definitely fit into that book, as would the magic light from the garden at Strokestown or the half-ruined walls of Jerpoint. Though, my heroine will probably not look as happy as me, given that she's got a haunting and some family secrets to deal with.
Even though I haven't used my real vacations in my work, as a reader, I've really enjoyed running across places I've been in fiction. So maybe someday, I'll do the same for my readers.
How about you? Do you enjoy incorporating favorite vacation spots in your creative work? Or reading it in others' work? I'd love to hear what you think in the comments!
We're on holiday vacation now, which means we can spare a little more time for enjoying some couch time together. The littlest Bryant and I are continuing our Disney+ Project. In the past few days, we've watch Dumbo, Bambi, Saludos Amigos, and The Three Caballeros.
We missed Victory Through Air Power. It wasn't available on Disney+ and appears to have been a propaganda film of the war era. I'd still like to see it sometime, but it won't be part of this project since it's not available on the Disney+ service.
You can see what we thought of other Disney movies here, here, and here.
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Truth be told, I was dreading watching Dumbo and Bambi. I remembered them as traumatizing from childhood.
They're still a bit brutal by contemporary standards for children's entertainment, but not as bad as I remembered. Of course, I'm also no longer six.
Poor Dumbo's mother is incarcerated for trying to protect her baby and he himself is subject to bullying from what should have been his community. Thank goodness for Timothy Q. Mouse! A spark of human kindness (in mouse form) in an otherwise desolate landscape.
Bambi may have fared better. Though he lost his mother, he still had a loving father and a loving community around him. His tragedy feels less tragic.
So, our thoughts:
First Dumbo. How hateful is it that the movie is titled with the derogatory nickname awarded a child by bullies? His real name is Jumbo, Jr. (And where is Jumbo, senior, BTW? He's even more absent than Bambi's dad).
My daughter and I both had trouble getting our minds around how making Dumbo a circus star was supposed to help his poor incarcerated mother. This wasn't a movie where animals could talk to humans, so the new circus star Dumbo would exactly be able to demand his mother's freedom in exchange for his work.
Then again, maybe the empathetic Timothy Q. Mouse was just trying to keep hope in his friend's life and help him build a life for himself.
Even the twelve-year-old watching with me questioned the kid-logic of the plan. The story reminded us both of the old stop motion Rudolph in that there is socially sanctioned bullying a child by adults and dubious messaging about what is and isn't supposed to be acceptable.
Those other elephants were horrid. First they pick on a baby elephant for his unusual physical attributes, then they shun him when, effectively orphaned, he takes work as a clown. Those elephants felt like they could have the society dames on Downton Abbey, or like Oscar Wilde might have enjoyed lampooning them in a play. Lady Bracknell as dowager elephant.
The drunken elephant sequence was still horrifying, and the minstrel crows made me cringe. Kudos to our society that my twelve-year-old didn't understand the depictions overall. I'm proud that she needed an explanation to understand what was going on with the crows. She's not familiar with those particular racial stereotypes, which means they're probably dying! w00t!
When the movie ended, after only a little over an hour, my daughter's main comment was that "they wrapped that up awfully quickly." I agree. It's like 55 minutes of abusing a child, followed by 10 minutes of magically making it all better. I guess it was easier than writing a real resolution to problems a baby elephant had no power to effect.
Now, Bambi. Bambi is a very odd movie. It feel more like a nature documentary with a little more anthropomorphism than usual. We watch a cycle of life: baby deer is born, grows up, faces dangers, survives, and we end with another baby deer (twins this time!). The joy in watching Bambi is the art of it. It's beautiful visually--water drops, naturalistic animal movement, forest greenery, light, and even the fire. (It is a little disconcerting how all so many of the female animals end up looking like they're wearing makeup though--like eyeshadow is what defines femininity).
My daughter thought they did an amazing job making the animals' mouths move in a way that still let them look like deer, rabbits, birds, etc., but made speech believable. I hadn't considered that, but I have to agree.
Bambi's mother's death didn't hit my daughter as hard as it hit me as a child. Maybe it's a difference in us as people, or a difference in what age we saw the film at (I was much younger when I saw it for the first time than her current twelve years). But she took it more in stride than I did as a child.
Compared to the kidney-punch-in-the-feels approach of a contemporary Pixar film, Bambi's mother's death felt, if anything, underplayed and subtle. While the gunshot ringing out and the silence that follows are still harrowing, Bambi (and the viewer) does not see his mother die, and he is not left long without guidance.
He is sad, but we quickly move forward in time to springtime and puberty to continue the cycle of life. As I mentioned above, Bambi has a good social support network, with a father who steps up and friends that stay by his side. The entire forest community is on the lookout for him. In that way, he's a very lucky boy.
After the two tearjerkers in a row, my daughter and I were happy to move onto "lighter" fare in Saludos Amigos and The Three Cabelleros. Saludos Amigos was a lot like The Reluctant Dragon in that it intermixed live action with cartoons and was, in part, a behind-the-scenes narrative about how animated features were made, involving animators traveling to South America to study the culture and creatures.
The highlight of Saludos Amigos was Goofy in "El Gaucho Goofy" which bears some similarity to "How to Ride a Horse" from The Reluctant Dragon in that it's a lot of physical humor involving Goofy trying to ride a horse. But it was still a lot of fun!
Since we watched it directly before The Three Caballeros, we got to see what the animators did with what they learned in their South American sojourn.
Unfortunately, what they did with it was turn Donald Duck into "a wolf" and throw him at beautiful women (animated and real) made of eye-rolling stereotypes.
So much red lipstick!
Saludos Amigos got a little boring for us before it was over. Maybe because it was mostly a travelogue and we've seen a lot of depictions of that part of the world already, so it was "old news."
The Three Cabelleros had more animated stories and less educational lecture, so we enjoyed it more. It started strong with the story of "The Cold-Blooded Penguin" Pablo who leaves the South Pole for the Galápagos Islands. Both of us enjoyed the creativity of the story--that bathtub speedboat was the best!
"The Flying Gauchito" was also charming, telling the story of a boy who finds a flying donkey. The other features were far less entertaining and memorable.
The story does feature the first intermixture of animated characters alongside live action ones though, in the form of Donald Duck and José Carioca, a parrot introduced in Saludos Amigos, competing for the attentions of Aurora Miranda, sister of the more famous Carmen Miranda. Intermixing live action and animation has come a long way since 1944 (compare it to Roger Rabbit or Space Jam), but it was an impressive beginning!
Our project continues into the later 1940s now with several features I don't remember ever watching and one that I suspect we won't be able to get: the contentious Song of the South.
I'd love to hear what you remember about any of these features in the comments! Thanks for reading!
Welcome to the first Wednesday of the month. You know what that means! It's time to let our insecurities hang out. Yep, it's the Insecure Writer's Support Group blog hop. If you're a writer at any stage of career, I highly recommend this blog hop as a way to connect with other writers for support, sympathy, ideas, and networking.
If you're a reader, it's a great way to peek behind the curtain of a writing life.
And the question: If you could pick one place in the world to sit and write your next story, where would it be and why?
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Over the years, I have learned to write anywhere. I've written in moving cars (not while driving), on the Mom couch at krav maga lessons, standing in the kitchen, sitting in bed, and hiding in a bathroom, among other more comfortable places. I'm good at blocking at distraction, too--which matters when you're trying to fit your writing life in the edges of an already full life.
That's not to say that's what I prefer. It's just what I've adapted to.
A few times, though, I got spoiled by getting to go on a writing retreat. I've been to the mountains and the sea, with other writers I knew and with strangers. The most valuable part for me has always been the temporary dropping of all other responsibilities and being *only* a writer for a few days in a row. The location is secondary. I feel as though a retreat almost anywhere would work for me, though it does help if there's easy access to good walking and scenic views.
The very best such experience I ever had was the Week of Quiet and Writing through RCWMS, an experience my husband found for me as a gift one year that still ranks as one of the most wonderful gifts I have ever received: basically you pay around $100 a night for a place to stay with walking distance beach and wetland access inclusive of meals! It may sound "churchy" but I'm not an outwardly religious person, and I felt comfortable and welcomed.
It's not fancy…in fact it feels a bit monastic: a small, plain room with only basic furnishings (bed, desk chair, dresser) and simple dining hall meals at prescribed hours. Myself, I liked that, I found it focusing, narrowing my non-writing world for a few days. The very plain simplicity of it really helped shield me from distraction.
Pelican House is a wonderful place for focus, and sitting in the cupola there, up the spiral staircase, with the window open so I could feel the sea air and hear the waves crashing while I wrote is my writing-related happy place. I'd write there every year if I could arrange it!
How about you, readers and visitors to my blog? Where would you go to invoke your muse for your own endeavors, given your druthers?
Summer is here! As I write this, I've been on summer vacation for (checks watch--remembers I don't have one and checks phone) 1.5 days!
As a teacher-writer-mother, I look forward to summertime all year for the control over my schedule and ability to focus more on my writing life instead of shoehorning it in around school demands. And I've made it! I'm a full time writer, for almost two months in a row.
As a 21st century woman though, I always want more out of my time than I can actually get, so here are my tips for managing a mother-writer summer schedule.
For context, my kids are currently 12 and 19, with the 19 year old living forty-five minutes away from home, near enough that I can see her often, and be there to help her when needed, but not part of my daily dinner plan.
1. Chunk your time: I'd love to have all day every day of summer for my writing life, but that's not realistic given the parameters of my life, so I just snag *part* of each day for writing.
I tend to think of my day in three chunks: morning, afternoon, evening. Because my tween will sleep as late as I let her, it generally goes: morning for me, afternoon for house/daughters, evening for family. This keeps things from bleeding into my writing time too much, but still leaves me pretty flexible during each chunk of day.
I get up when my husband gets up for work even though I could probably get away with sleeping later. I'm a total wimp about the heat, so I get outside for my exercise first: a walk or a run with my dog immediately before the summer sun is fully awake and trying to bake us alive. This has the added benefit of waking up my brain in a pleasant environment.
Then, I start all the appliances, so clean dishes and laundry (and sometimes even lunch: go rice cooker and instant pot!) happen while I'm not looking, and it's breakfast and writing time. I try to stop at lunch time.
Afternoons are for running errands and making sure the tween has some fun and doesn't turn into a total lump of lazy. Often I can write during this time as well, jotting down thoughts in the notes app on my phone and handling the social media commitment of a writing life during the waiting moments. If there's a playdate or mom couch time and my interaction level is lower, I steal that for writing, too.
Evenings are for managing home life aspects that require all of us (after the husband gets home from work) and for enjoying time together: games, movies, outings, etc. Sometimes I sneak extra writing time during this time, if there's dad-daughter time going on.
2. Make arrangements for a few ONLY writing days:
For me, that means sending the youngest away (camp, visiting Grandma, overnights at someone else's house, etc.) or sending me away (writing retreat!). I can usually only manage about two weeks of full time writing life across a summer, but they are heaven on earth when they come.
It requires being strict about protecting that time. If the youngest is at camp, I AM NOT filling that time up with errands, even pleasant ones like lunch with my sister. I grab those hours with both hands and hold on tight, refusing to let anything shy of an actual emergency wrest them from my grip.
I also have to be strict with myself about using the time well when I get it. I set priority lists of what to write in what order and am careful not to let myself fritter the time away on social media or writing the wrong things.
My rules for prioritization are: passion level, publication expectations, promises made, and watching out for burnout. Just like every other part of my life, choosing how to spend my writing time is a balancing act, too.
3. Planning ahead helps.
Generally, we plan and shop on Sunday for the entire upcoming week, making note of al the "extra" (not in the usual schedule) things we need/want to do, and making meal plans.
This really helps, because I don't have to spend time on Monday-Friday deciding on meals or shopping them. Those decisions have already been made; all I have to do is follow the plan. That frees up brain space for more fun things like deciding why my male lead's secret twin was a secret.
I plan ahead for my writing time as well, figuring out which day will be spent writing a blog post, which a short story, which focused on the current novel, which on promotion, and so on. I can't do all those things every day, and it helps me to compartmentalize them, promising each task its spotlight moment in turn.
After all this time, I'm good at figuring out what kind of writing I'll be able to do given the constraints of a day: how much time a row I can get, likelihood of interruption, need to devote extra time to other parts of life, etc.
So, there are my ideas for managing a writing life among the other demands I've taken on. How about you, kind readers? Any tips that work for you? How do you protect and arrange time for your creative endeavors?
This week's picture prompt comes from artist Erinn Komschlies whose work can be found here. The story it inspired for me can be found below the picture:
Left Turn at Albuquerque
Misting rain blew against her cheek and Genevieve wiped her glasses on her sweater. Without the aid of her lenses, she couldn't make out much detail--the world became smears of color and abstract shapes. She pocketed the glasses for now. It was prettier this way, and she didn't need to be able to read right now.
She clutched her small red suitcase in her hand, resisting the urge to spin in circles like a happy child. Excitement about her impending journey bubbled inside her like champagne bubbles and left her feeling as intoxicated as if she really had been drinking. She'd never done anything like this before and it felt wonderful.
The light shining from the streetlights made rainbows in the water pooling on the platform. Genevieve shuffled one foot in the puddle she stood in, flinging a light arc of droplets out into the air in front of her. "Hey!" someone yelled.
"Oh, sorry!" Genevieve fumbled her glasses back out of her pocket and shoved them on quickly. In the shadows of the opposite wall of the waiting area she saw a woman brushing at her skirt and glaring at her. "Sorry," Genevieve said again. "I didn't see you."
The woman frowned down at her skirt, but her face softened when she looked up at Genevieve. "Bit fidgety, aren't you?"
"Guilty as charged."
"What's got you so nervous?"
"Oh, I'm not nervous so much as excited."
"About going to Wichita?"
The doubt that clouded the woman's voice threatened to make Genevieve break into giggles. She cleared her throat to suppress the urge. "I'm going all the way to Albuquerque."
The woman laughed. "Albuquerque?"
"They have a balloon festival."
The woman shielded her eyes and looked out at the train platform, awash in a new spray of rain that beat against the side of the train with a dramatic thump. "I hope the weather is better there."
Genevieve lifted her face into the spray, imagining how she might miss the rain when the desert wind whipped against her cheeks. She bounced a little on her toes, heels smacking against the wet ground with a sound like applause. The whistle blew and a shiver of anticipation went down her back. She grinned at the woman. "Oh, I'll be fine. You can't rain on my parade."
Time, it seems, has sped faster with each year of my life. Most days are so stuffed that at the end, I fall onto the sofa feeling like I've been run over. It gets to me after a while, even when the things my day is stuffed with are all pleasant and fun.
I get frazzled and grumpy if I don't get to slow down, appreciate, and reflect often enough.
Writing is good for that. It's a quiet, solo activity, reflective and thoughtful. But there are times when even that is not enough to reset my equilibrium.
But, as I write this, I'm on my second snow day, with the possibility of yet another one coming. The timing couldn't be better. Thank you, Mother Nature!
My house was well stocked with yummy things thanks to our Chanukah preparations. Our power
stayed on, so we could enjoy the full gamut of entertainment options we've gathered over the years. We had enough wood for fires and all four Bryants were already at home when the weather hit.
As a group, the Bryants finished some lingering projects for school, cleaned up, caught up on laundry, baked, slept extra, played games, read, played in the snow, petted the dog and told him he's pretty, and just sat and talked beside a fire with cocoa.
Even the husband who still had to work, because his work can be done from home, got to sleep later, avoid driving, eat warm food prepared with love, and enjoy better breaks during his day.
We didn't run any errands, do any shopping (except maybe the clicky kind: online), visit anyone outside of walking distance, or attend any events.
I'm glad the weather forced us into a little quiet time just as we needed it. All of us are the better for the lull.
The word retreat is a funny one. It can mean giving up the fight and running away. It can also mean a purposeful step back, a repose or reflection. This year I needed both.
I had dropped my novel entirely in May and June, choosing instead to work on short fiction to match my shorter focus (end of school year teaching + graduating daughter = scatterbrained Samantha). I was having a hard time getting back into the flow and picking the project back up. I felt lost in my own novel. All my momentum had fallen still.
My critique group has a tradition (we've done it three times now, so that's a tradition, right?) of taking a summer writing retreat. We pool our funds and rent someplace nice for a few days in July and go and write our fingers off. This year's retreat was at Pelican House, part of the Trinity Center in Salter Path, NC. I've been on two previous writing retreats here with the RCWMS and when my group said they wanted beach instead of mountains this year, I suggested here.
3 Views from my retreat
Besides the access to the sea and the wetlands, wonderful for walking and thinking or clearing your head, this complex offers a variety of working and contemplation areas and a dining hall, so I can just show up and eat without having to give over any time to meal preparation (anyone who prepares the meals at their house will understand how much time that really is). And, especially for beach access, it was very inexpensive. Just over $300 covered my share of three nights food and lodging.
But, I'm not meaning to make this blogpost into an ad for Pelican House. I'm meaning to write about the value of a retreat.
I'm a writer with a full time job (sometimes more than full time: I teach) and a family (a husband, a teen/young adult, a tween, and a rescue dog), so my writing is often in the backseat of my life, crammed into the corners where I can stuff it. I'm pretty good at being productive this way. In the five years since I "went pro" by signing my first book contract, I've completed two more novels, several short stories, and drafted three other novels that are simmering on my back burner now. But, it's not easy. Too often I lose the flow because I can't get enough focus: either I'm short on time, or my mental and emotional energy is pulled somewhere else.
But a retreat is dedicated time.
I go somewhere else, so I can't get distracted by the state of my house and decide that clean towels matter more than fresh words. Out of my usual element is a good place for fresh starts.
I make arrangements for my children and dog (the husband went with me this time, but even if he hadn't, he'd make his own arrangements). I put off any other life business and really, truly live only my writing life for a few days. No teaching life. No home life. No mom life. Just writing.
I go with trusted writing friends, which leaves room for talk and discussion to help hash out ideas if I want it, and makes my company people who will understand if I find a zone and ignore them for eight hours, too.
I go with a clear goal. This year, mine was to map out what I've already written, trying using storycards for the first time to organize my vision, and then to get back into writing this book!
StoryCards for Thursday's Children, Day 1
I feel really good about the progress I made. Not only am I feeling focused on this book, I think using storycards might be my new M.O.
I've tried doing this digitally with Scrivener and other tools, but it wasn't really working for me. So, I went with paper and pen. Sometimes, changing the tools you use can make all the difference in how it works for your brain. I'm mostly a digital tools kind of writer, but I do find that some things work better for me on paper and by hand.
Orange notecards here are Kye'luh Wade's (my main character). Green ones are Jason Berger. Yellow ones are Malcolm Singletary. Pink ones are rando-thoughts that I didn't want to lose about problems to fix or other chapters to write, sort of my "parking lot" for stuff to pick up later.
When I sat down to do this, I had about 50K of the novel written, all pantsed. I've seen several different versions of storycards, storyboarding, post-it outlining, or whatever you want to call this process. Most recently, I'd read DIY MFA by Gabriela Pereira (well, part of it; I'm not done yet). Pereira calls this process "scene cards" and says that each scene card should include: a title, a list of major players, a description of the action, and a statement of the scene's purpose. That last part is crucial for pantsers like me, who are always looking to impose structure after the fact.
So, that's what I did first: made a scene card for each chapter I had already written, adding the color coding element for my three point of view characters to watch for balance among them as well.
It was enlightening.
Sometimes I couldn't easily name a purpose for a scene, or I could only name one purpose and it didn't seem like a very important one. Sometimes, I ran into a glut of several chapters in a row with a single character, leaving my other storylines hanging too long. Sometimes I spotted a GIANT hole where there's nothing to connect an earlier scene to what happens later.
This was so helpful! It probably also helped that I was far enough into the process to have a little distance. It almost felt like I was the helpful friend examining someone else's books to find the flaws and help fix them, rather than being my own critic. It felt like good useful work instead of self-recrimination or negative self-talk.
So, does this mean I'm an outliner/planner now?
I don't think so.
I think my process will still involve a fair amount of exploratory/discovery writing where I pants my way across the countryside waiting for the story to tell me what it's about. But I think I'll get to a point on each project, where this will become useful and will help me get to the end and build a more coherent first full draft. So, I'm excited about finding something new that works for me!
I've always liked games. It's partly the game itself--the brain tease, problem-solving feeling of achievement--and partly the camaraderie of the time with my playmates.
When I married my husband, I leveled up when it came to games, learning about a world of different sorts of games than the Gin Rummy, Clue, and Yahtzee that I grew up on. Now we're a pretty serious gaming family, whether we're talking about board games, card games, improv games, role-playing games, or video games. We have quite a library of games to enjoy, but it can be hard to find time amongst all of life's other demands.
I got to play quite a few games in the past few weeks. Summer vacation is great for that, because I sometimes still have a little brain left to use for fun at the end of the day :-) Some of the fun is choosing the right kind of game for the group and the time frame.
So here are a few of my favorite picks from Bryant family gaming so far this summer.
What do you play with an 11 year old girl, an 18 year old girl and her boyfriend, three grandparents, an aunt, and a set of parents during a family graduation party? We went with Use Your Words.
It's a party game for a videogame console. We played it on our Playstation 4. It doesn't require any video-gaming skills. Instead it networks your phones, tablets, or other internet-accessing devices through a website with a room code. It's a series of mini-games in which you make up subtitles for a film clip, newspaper headlines, and mad-libs style fill-in-the-blanks, with the goal of being funny enough that the other players will vote for your answer. It's great in that it's not knowledge based (unlike trivia games), so younger players (so long as they are old enough to read and write well) can participate fully.
Another console based game I enjoyed recently was Overcooked on the Nintendo Switch. This one is a co-op game (meaning all the players are working together to achieve a goal, rather than working against each other). It's probably easier for people who have some video game experience, but there are only a few buttons to figure out. This matters to me as I'm not that great at remembering complicated game controls.
The premise is that we are a group of chefs trying to fill orders while the kitchen itself provides additional challenges, like occasionally getting rearranged as the ship rocks, or having very narrow passageways so it's hard to move around each other. It's got a silly animation style and each challenge is short, so you don't need a lot of time to play either. I'm especially fond of co-op games, so this one is right up my alley.
Off screen, I've been enjoying short board and card games: games with a less-than-15 minute
playtime. Our recent high school graduate is one busy young woman and it can be hard to pin her down long enough to play something good, but with quick-but-fun games like Kokoro, Tides Time, and Wonderland, we can fit in a quick round of fun after dinner and still leave time for her to spend time with all her friends.
Kokoro is my favorite of these three. You get a printed white-erase board with the grid for the game on it and based on the cards you pull, have to build a maze-like path connecting certain elements. The more you connect, the higher your score.
Tides of Time and Wonderland were also beautiful and fun to play, but are only two player games, so great for me and my husband, but not great for family night.
I'm looking for more games with a very short play time like this because they really fit well into this phase of life.
One more recent play was Rising Sun. This is a big board game. Best with several players (we played with 5) and requiring a long play time of three or more hours.
My husband scored this one on Kickstarter, so we have the edition with all the fancier fiddly-bits: metal coins, 3D building and tokens for various parts, and extra materials that don't come with the standard edition. The more I've played games, the more I've come to appreciate the art and craftsmanship of well made game pieces. They make a game feel like a luxury experience.
This game took me a while to understand, but I really came to appreciate it. Both complex and easy to understand, it's a satisfying experience for more experienced gamers who are looking for something a little different. It's a territory game in some ways, but there's also a political element, monsters, special abilities, and several different possible paths to victory, not necessarily coming from winning the most battles. I look forward to playing this one again!
So, that's what I've been playing this summer. You can read my fuller reviews and comments about these and other games I've been playing in this Google Plus collection.
Any other gamers out there among my blog-readers? What have you been playing? Got any suggestions I should check out?
I've had an interesting confluence of events this week. My husband and one of my daughters are away on a trip together. My other daughter is busy every day with a training for her school's mentoring program and her job. She'll practically be a roommate that just pops by now and then to raid the fridge.
That leaves only two Bryants at home: me and the dog.
You know what this means?
It means that I can choose *everything* about my own schedule. When to get up, when to eat (and what!), when to go out, when to sleep, when to shower, when to write . . .EVERYTHING. O'Neill is a very flexible boy. He'll still want to run and walk, but he's happy to let me choose the time. This is literally the fewest limits on my time I can ever remember having, at least as an adult.
I'm giddy just thinking about it.
I'd be a lot less happy about it if this were long term, but it's really for about five days, just long enough to indulge myself a little. A *taste* of empty nest, without the feelings of loss because all my birds will come back to roost in a few days.
I haven't made any super exciting plans. I'll probably stay very close to home most of the time, and WRITE ALL THE WORDS! But, I anticipate enjoying my respite from my regularly scheduled life, just in time for school to start (my first teacher work day is Friday). See you on the flipside!
A traditional Thanksgiving is a lot of work. (I know: #firstworldproblems) Even in families that divide the cooking and hosting labor, there are still many many tasks on that to-do list to do it up "right." We don't live near our extended families, so that's not possible for us.
As much as I love Thanksgiving foods and having a lovely meal with my loved ones, I don't love the work. Especially not at the end of November, when middle school teachers like me feel like they might drown in the to-do list at school, if the drama doesn't kill us first.
It definitely doesn't feel like a holiday to me to take the primary cook (me) and make her cook more. So, a few years ago, when I was overextended and making myself crazy, we agreed to take it down a notch. We order Thanksgiving from Weaver Street Market. The food is good. It's still beautiful and festive, but the time and stress is cut in half or maybe even less. I've never regretted that decision (and if my family does, they are kind enough not to say so).
Now, when I sit down at the table, I don't fall asleep in the mashed potatoes. Instead, I have energy for making hand turkeys with the kids (yes, we make the teenager do it, too), and watching really cheesy fun movies and playing board games. I get to jump in the leaf piles because I'm not hovering over something delicate in the kitchen.
That's some giving (in the give and take sense) and I am thankful yet again for my family. May this holiday (if you celebrate) bring you joy and relaxation as well as yummy treats.
When most folks think about spring break, they are probably thinking break in the sense of a respite and a rest. And that's definitely part of what Spring Break is for teachers.
But each year, when I get to this point in the year, I can't help think about other kinds of break: as in break-downs, broken spirits, rifts and fissures.
As the countdown to spring break begins, you can see it in the bent backs of the educators, drifting through the halls with glazed eyes and a death grip on their coffee cups in those few quiet moments before the chaos we call children descend upon us. There are fissures in our vision, too many things we've tried that didn't work, too many obstacles, too much vitriol instead of fuel. The cracks spread across our souls the way they spread across glass--that little crack in your cell phone screen that slowly takes over the entire view.
So these few days are all about doing what you need to so that you can heal and repair, then come back in swinging for the last few weeks before testing season drops down over us like a plastic dome cutting off the oxygen. You hear different terms for it: filling the well, retreat, vacation. Really, it's self-care, so it's different for everyone. For some, it's a change of venue. For some, it's just sleep or time in the outdoors. For some, it's reading or time on creative pursuits. For some, it's physical activity. For some, it's junk television. For some, it's organizing your cabinets.
For me, it's all these things. Even summer break is no longer long enough to leave me fully recharged, not after twenty years of wear and tear on my teaching muscles. So with just one week to pull it together, I'm trying to do a little bit of all the things that recharge me: I took a short trip to the mountains (family, travel and outdoors). I've been sleeping late (by woman with kids standards, anyway). I did a metric ton of laundry and feel caught up. And I started a new writing project.
And I still have a few more days :-) Maybe I'll come out of this unbroken after all.
It's that time of year again, right as summer is getting ready to turn the corner into back-to-school shopping. It's time to pack up the family and head to Indianapolis: GEN CON!
Gen Con, aka The Best Four Days in Gaming, is a giant yearly gaming con held in Indianapolis. I swear there are more people at this con than live in my entire town. And all of them are geeky. It's like having joined a commune of people the same kind of crazy as me, but only for a few days. And it starts tomorrow!
Ascension! I fell in love with this game when my husband first bought me the original game a few years ago. We've bought every expansion and addition since. It's a deck-building game, meaning that you acquire cards through play that you then utilize to defeat monsters or acquire other cards. In other words, you build your deck of cards through gameplay. In the end the player who has earned the most honor (victory points) wins!
I'll be playing in a tournament with the new set. I don't know how well I'll do as I haven't had time to play with the new cards that much yet, but I'll love it all the same. The art is beautiful and the game mechanics are smooth. It's my favorite game.
http://images.gencon.com/2014.Writers.Logo.jpg
The Writer's Symposium! Gen Con's con within a con is a haven for writers, aspiring writers, and book-lovers. With sessions on craft, business of writing, and general topics of interest to writers (like body disposal, weaponry, or genre specific information), there's something for anyone with an interest in speculative fiction.
This year's featured speakers are Terry Brooks, Elizabeth Bear, and Chuck Wendig and I'm looking forward to hearing from all three of them during my time in the writing wing of things as well as authors I've met other years like Kameron Hurley, Jaym Gates, and Elizabeth Vaughan.
Shopping in the Dealer's Hall will be definitely be a highlight. It's not good for my pocketbook, but it's good for my greedy little heart to walk up and down the aisles and see table after table of things I actually want to buy. This is not my usual shopping experience. I hate shopping under most circumstances, but at GenCon I have the chance to buy books, games, clothes, and art from the passionate artists who made them!
Luckily my family is geeky, too, so I can buy my holiday gifts here. The hard part is not using up my mortgage money!
I've also left myself some unscheduled hours to people watching, catching performances by singers, taking picture of cosplayers, and eating yummy things from food trucks. This my friends, is my kind of summer vacation!
This is my first week of summer vacation. As readers of this blog already know, I am a middle school Spanish teacher by day, and a novelist by night. On the side, I also parent, wife, dog-mom, volunteer, organize, cook, shop, drive, household, and sometimes even watch TV or go to a movie. It's a lot of hats. After a while it makes my neck stiff from the weight.
So summer vacation is a relief (both to me and my chiropractor) because I get to take off the teacher hat for a few weeks. The teacher hat is some kind of sponge hat, because it gets fuller and heavier as the year goes on. By April, it weighs approximately as much as my car, so putting it down is a welcome respite.
For teachers, summer vacation is like a promised land, sparkling on the horizon. The problem I always run into is getting everything I want and need out of my non-teaching time, so that I come back refreshed, refocused, and ready to inspire young people to learn.
So my summer list:
Writing, lots and lots of writing. Finish the sequel and submit it. Revise the opening to Cold Spring and resubmit it. Finish writing the novella for the superhero novella and submit it. Write a few more short stories. Resubmit (revising if necessary) everything that has come back rejected. Decide which of my projects will get my hard focus next: the second book in the Cold Spring trilogy? the third book in the menopausal superheroes? the middle grades novel?
Reading, lots and lots of reading. I struggle to find time to read during the school year, and I love to swim in the sea of books all summer long.
Sleeping and resting: let those days start a little later and actually wake up feeling rested. Take naps. Watch a little TV.
Household catch-up: All that stuff that piled up all year and is now a fire hazard in the garage. Yep, time to bring out the backhoe and deal with that stuff.
Over the years, I've learned that I have to be careful to divide my time between home, family and words or I don't get the refresh that summer vacation is supposed to bring me. I have to feel like progress was made on all fronts and that there was enough relaxed fun-time.
So, here's to summer, filling my cup back up so I don't run dry during school months. I'll try to spend mine under a nice summer hat: colorful and broad brimmed and fun.
I've mostly been reading my own work this week. Last week, I finished book one of a historical fiction trilogy I'm working on. So this week was a shifting gears week, back to my superheroes. As you would imagine, that's a completely different world and style. Making the shift was harder than I thought it would be.
When it became clear I wasn't going to be able to just jump in and pick up where I left off, I re-read a lot of the first novel and what I had written so far on the second and made myself some charts. Charts are vital for me as a writer in following all the different threads and making sure I don't make silly continuity errors, like having some appear in a scene after he already died, or having a character in two places at the same time. In a sequel, it's even more vital because I can't contradict what took place in book one.
I also read a few stories for an online critique group I participate in for developing my short stories, and worked on another beta read. I do read a lot! Mostly, it's just not yet published.
So far as published books, I did manage to read more of Greatshadow by James Maxey--I'm in the end battle now and still really enjoying it. James has created an interesting band of adventurers with a variety of motivations and abilities. In a recent part I read, a man transformed into a worm and was cut in half. When he turned back into a man, there were now two of him.
I'm also reading Don Quijote, the next choice for my library's Monday classics book club. I'm doing a lot better with Cervantes than I did with Faulkner. I last fully read Don Quijote in college and I've been trying to read it in Spanish for years, but it's a serious stretch for my Spanish skills, so it's slow going. For book club, I'll stick with the English. Mine is translated by Tobias Smollett. It's the same one I read previously, just a new copy since the old one fell apart on me.
Book clubs are a great motivator for me since they give me a deadline and help me prioritize time to finish things. As my blog title suggests, I'm always trying to balance the hours of the day for everything I want out of them: sleeping, working for pay, writing, playing, reading, social life. Even in summer, when most of my hours are mine to arrange, it's difficult to balance things so that each day feels comprised of the right things and leaves me feeling good.
Now, NJ is a reader! Books are her life. We took in our reading log to the library a couple of days ago, so she could get her prizes. Over the course of twenty days (since we'd last turned in our count), she read over 1900 minutes. That's practically a full work week! Her obsession with Tiny Titans continues and we decimated the graphic novels section, picking her up old favorites like Babymouse, and a few new things to explore like Geronimo Stilton and Squish. For our audio book, we chose a Ghosthunters that we had missed: The Moldy Baroness. It promises to be very exciting.
M had a camp all this last week, so read less. She did finish Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell while she was traveling and said she really enjoyed it, though Eleanor and Park was better. She's been choosing more emotional storylines lately after a lifetime of being an adventure fan. Watch out Rick Riordan, you might be replaced!
Summer is beginning its wind-down now, sadly. One of us starts school on August 18. We'd best get back to our books if we're going to get it all read by then!
Summer is a quiet, calm song wafting on a gentle breeze, promising love and happiness.
Summer is a sparkling jewel on the horizon that helps me pull myself from the quicksand and keep going when it might be easier to give up.
Summer is the softly lit respite I long for when I suffer under fluorescent lighting.
I love summer.
I teach for a living. So, for me, maybe more than for other adults, summer is important. Summer is this shining light at the end of a, sometimes, very dark tunnel. It's the carrot I drag myself behind when the school year gets tough and I'm tired and burning out. I promise myself the sacrifice will all be worth it and I'll be rewarded with summer.
Summer vacation is short this year. I lost a week to snow days, so today is actually my first day off. I've been home for a few days already though, having used leave days to take off optional teacher workdays. It's not that I lacked things to do at school. It's that I lacked energy and enthusiasm for the tasks.
This week isn't really off either. I took an extra contract for some work on a new district initiative, so I'll work two days this week, too. I'll work four or five others days over summer, here and there. But, mostly, I've got long hours of time to use as I see fit.
So, what to do, what to do?
First and foremost: write. I've got two books to finish, for goodness sake, and another one or two waiting for me to start them.
Secondly: do lots of fun summer things with the kids that don't cost very much. Squirt each other with the hose. Blow bubbles. Take long walks in the shady woods. Eat ice cream. Read.
Thirdly: make myself relax. This is harder than you might think. I'm used to working very hard. On an average school day, I prepare twelve meals (four people, three times a day), teach six classes, facilitate a meeting, prepare six more lessons, run at least one life errand, do a load of laundry and a set of dishes, care for the dog, and write my daily minimum 650 words. I try to exercise, too. Though I fail at that most of the time.
It's both lovely and difficult to go from so much to do to a smaller list. I have to stop myself from taking on every organizational and repair project that has come up since last summer. I have to tell myself that it's okay to spend some hours on the couch reading or watching television.
Time resting is not time wasted. That's my summer mantra. So, on that note, I think I'll take a book outside. It's nice this morning.
It was a rough week for me in terms of reading. I'm truly exhausted at the end of the school day from riding herd on a surging tsunami of middle-schoolers fit to burst with excitement about summer. But, still I am reading, just not as much or as quickly as I want to.
This week I finished The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker. I read it in paperback as a choice for a neighborhood reading club.
I really enjoyed it. The premise was a joy, though it sounds like a joke: a golem and a jinni walk into a foreign city. The author did a beautiful job pulling it all together into what felt like exactly the right ending to me. I did get a little bored during the second third of the book, when the characters were established, and we weren't yet in the crisis moment. That second third is tricksy . . .I'm struggling with it in the rewrite of one of my own novels. There are a lot of good quiet moments in Wecker's book during the part, but the quietness might be the problem. So again, not a perfect book, but a good book. One I would recommend to each of you.
I've also continued reading Greatshadow by James Maxey this week. It's my bedside book, and I've not lasted long for bedtime reading in my current state of exhaustion, so I didn't make a lot of progress. But I continue to really like Infidel (the main character: a woman with indestructible flesh and a mysterious past), and am engaged by the unusual choice of narrator. Where I am in the plot, the adventure is really about to begin. We've gathered our motley crew of heroes/mercenaries and are off to find the dragon. It should make good reading this coming week as I appreciate my first student-free days.
I just started Lilith Dark and the Beastie Tree by +Charles C. Dowd . I've been following him on G+ for a
while and knew I'd eventually get this book to share with my seven-year-old. There was a sale recently that suited me, so I bought it. It's perfect for my daughter, featuring a fierce little girl with a powerful imagination as the main character. I'll probably finish it this weekend and pass it on to the Small Fry. It reminds me of other graphic novels I've enjoyed with my daughters like Ernest and Rebecca by Guillame Bianco and Antonello Dalena or Courtney Crumrin by Ted Naifeh.
Other than that, I've been working on a beta read for a friend. Her novel is quite good! I hope to be able to tell you where to buy it a few months down the road.
NJ (7) has really jumped into summer reading with both feet. She's very motivated by the little chart where we record our reading numbers. She's recorded somewhere between 75 and 150 minutes each day . . . and I suspect we're under-recording her a little bit. If you leave that child sit anywhere near a book, she's reading. :-)
She brought home a darling picture book from school: Slugs in Love by Susan Pearson and Kevin O'Malley. It's a sweet story about a girl slug with a crush who writes poems to win his heart. NJ is such a romantic soul. When she finished reading it, she said, "Mommy! That was the best book ever! And you have to read it right now!" So, of course, I did.
She's been devouring Tiny Titans since our last trip to the library as well. I think she's read each volume that we checked out at least six times. She loves Beast Boy. He's just her kind of silly.
In the car, we're listening to Horrible Harry. He's new to us, and I appreciate the change of pace after nearly a yearlong obsession with Frannie K. Stein and Junie B. Jones. Harry's got an obsession with gross things that suits NJ's sense of humor right now, so I think it's going to be a hit.
The older daughter (14) is almost finished with Fangirl, which I read last week and passed on to her. She doesn't like it as much as another book by the same author (Eleanor & Park), but she says it's pretty good. She just finished Cress by Marissa Meyer, the third in a fairy-tale derived cyborg series. I read the first two with her and really enjoyed them. She said the third one is more complicated because there are so many more characters now, but that it's still well worth the read.
Next on her list is The Evolution of Mara Dyer by Michelle Hodkin. It's another one that I read with my school YA reading club and passed to her. I liked it, though some parts of it disappointed me. I suspect M will like it better. She is, after all, the target audience and is much more interested in angsty teen love than I am :-)
So, there you go: another week of reading by the Bryant girls. I love summer.
The little one and I went to sign up for summer reading at our library today. We don't need a special program to read, especially not her. I'm always having to tell her to put down a book because there's something else we have to do (and laughing on the inside, that I, of all people, am telling someone to put down a book).
But, we love the summer reading program anyway. It's not about finding motivation to read, it's about spending time in that energetic buzz of rooms full of people who love to read. Especially rooms full of very young people who love to read and librarians who love to help them find the right books for them.
So, this summer, I thought I'd post each Monday about what NJ (age 7) and I (age 43) are reading.
Me: I just finished Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell. I read it in hardback. It came to me via a bookclub at school (a bunch of middle school teachers who read young adult literature together). I liked it. It was light fun, and became more engaged in it than I thought I would at first. I didn't love it. While I connected with the character at some levels, at others, I didn't. Plus, I'm getting old . .. and right now, the age of people who make me want to roll my eyes the most is people in their early twenties. I'm sure I was equally intolerable at that age, in very similar ways, but it doesn't make me want to read books about people who are college age.
I'm a multi-book reader. I keep books in different locations and read them when I am in that location
(bedside, car--not while driving, but while waiting for children--, near the sofa, etc.). So I'm in the middle of two other books right now, too. The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker, and Greatshadow by James Maxey. Both are good choices for me at the end of the school year because they are fantasy stories with a lot of good escapism. The Golem and the Jinni is lagging for me a little right now, but I've heard it's worth sticking with to get to good stuff at the end. Greatshadow, on the other hand, is rocking right now. It's a very interesting premise and even more interesting female protagonist. I'm anxious to see where it goes!
I also need to find time for two unpublished novels I'm reading for writing friends and Faulkner's Absalom!Absalom! for a library book club on classics. Good thing school is almost over and I can clear more time to read!
NJ: We just returned most of the library's collection of Charlie and Lola books by Lauren Child. Charlie is an amazing big brother with a clever and amusing little sister. NJ really enjoys the dynamic between the two siblings. I've caught her trying to convince her own teenaged sister to be more like Charlie :-) Norah has devoured all of these books much as she devoured Mo Willems books a few months earlier.
We may finally be done with Babymouse for a little while. This is the
first time we've left the library without a Babymouse in many months. Babymouse may have caught the short shrift this time because there were so many awesome books in the kid-appropriate graphic novel section and because our library just reorganized some shelves making those books more prominently displayed. This time, she picked some Tiny Titans and a new-to-us Papercutz series called Béka and Crip: Dance Class: School Night Fever.
NJ definitely loves graphic novels. She is both an artist and a reader, so this makes perfect sense to me. It's a lot of fun when we read them together and pick different characters to voice. She's even beginning to write a series herself. They are one page scenes called "Family Disasters."
Watch out. All three Bryant girls might be available in a bookstore near you before too long. In the meantime, I'm heading outside to read for a while.
