Weekend Review: Bewitching: The Kendra Chronicles

I don't read many young adult novels, but whenever I do I wonder if it will be too young for me. I decided to read this one after reading Beastly, only to find that this one is too young for me. It's basically a retelling of Cinderella with bits of other fairy tales thrown in. In Beastly I liked Kendra, she was probably my favorite character, in her own novel she's basically a supporting character. I did like hearing what happened to her family and I guess the retelling of Hanzel and Gretal didn't bother me. I also liked that she explains why she keeps going to high school. I didn't care for any of the other characters, they were all bland. I honestly couldn't find myself caring about any of them, but I did wish that the book would have focused more on Kendra and not the other characters. This book is such a disappoint to me. Hopefully Towering is better because I bought that one too.

Young Adult

I've never written a young adult novel, and I don't know if I plan to. I didn't really read young adult novels until recently. When I was a teenager there either weren't as many young adult novels or they were poorly marketed. I remember reading Stephan King as a teenager. I think Smack and Speak may have been the only young adult novels that I read when I was a teenager. I kind of wish some of the novels that are available now wold have been there when I was a teenager. It would have been nice to read about characters who weren't one dimensional with easy to solve problems. I don't remember going to the library and seeing a section with vampires, werewolves, fairies, etc. When I was a teenager I think most of the fiction aimed at us was realistic, and that's a shame.

Why having other interests is important.

In the years since I've decided to try my hand at writing professionally(or at least trying to get there), I've pushed aside all other interests besides writing and reading. I would occasionally play a video game, but would soon push that aside to do something related to writing. Now I feel like it is important to have other interests. Not only does having other interests improve my writing by helping me build stronger characters, but it helps me to relax and take my mind off of things.

Tech Support

Lately I've been doing a lot of editing, but my computer recently put a stop to that. I write on a laptop, I just think it's easier and I can bring it anywhere, and suddenly my mouse pointer disappeared. I couldn't click on anything! I couldn't scroll, I couldn't select anything, and I've never been able to use the computer without a mouse. This morning I finally got in touch with tech support, and the solution was simple (I just had to press f5). I was a bit scared that I would have to lose all my writing. I try to keep everything on a flash drive, but I forgot to save recently. Luckily, I got my computer to work again, but I need to start saving more frequently.

Creative Freedom

Creative freedom is something that I have personally struggled with for almost my entire life. I remember thinking about how people would see me if I wrote something they didn't like. I had a hard time sharing my work with my family and closest friends. I didn't want them to think of me as violent because I wrote about monsters. I also didn't want them to tell me what I should write, or let them influence me. I think that's part of the reason it's been so hard to unleash my writing around the world. I'm scared of what my family will think. I've always loved writing about vampires, werewolves, and other scary creatures, but I know there are some people who don't care much for those creatures. I was worried about what they might think if I wrote about zombies, or werewolves. I couldn't even write with my boyfriend in the same room as me, even though he likes all the creatures that I write about and displays interest in my writing. I came to realize that I was only holding myself back. I will never be able to be a successful writer if I don't embrace my creative freedom. I am the only one who thinks like I do, which means I am the only one who can tell a story like I do. I have to write the stories that I want to write, without fear that someone will try to tell me how to write.

Perfect Writing

I haven't been writing very much about writing. That's probably because I've been busy writing and editing. I feel like I can't just throw something out into the world. It has to be perfect, and I never feel that anything that I write will be perfect. Maybe it's not supposed to be. Maybe all writing has flaws and I just can't always see it because I'm not the one who wrote it. I think all authors feel that way, but I'm not sure when they know their book is finished. When do you know the book that you wrote is as good as you can get it? Can it always get better? I'm sure if you passed around a notebook to every person in the world and told them to add to or edit the current story you'd get an ever changing story that become better with each stroke of the pen. I know there's no perfect, but when is there the best I can do? I think I'll always feel like I can do better, that's why my books aren't out yet.

Casual Tuesday: Black Widow toys

I was going to wait until Friday to post this, but I figured I may as well say something while this is still a hot topic on the internet. One of my favorite memories from when I was younger is when I was about six or seven years old and I went to pick up a pizza with my father. The pizza restaurant had a Street Fighter 2 arcade game near the entrance and my father and I played it together. It was the Street Fighter that only featured eight characters, but one of them was Chun Li, a female fighter. I later asked for the game for my birthday, in fact, I still play the game now as an adult and Chun Li is still one of my favorite fighters in the game. What's the point of this story? Well, as a young female I liked having a character in a game or movie that I could relate to. If I was young now that character would probably be Black Widow or the Scarlet Witch, which makes me wonder why there are so few toys and other merch featuring these ladies. I'm sure girls would be glad to see a character that they could relate to on t-shirts. I'm sure the action figures would sell, because I used to have pink ranger action figures when I was little and used to love power rangers. I saw a post earlier that said there's no Black Widow stuff in stores because it wouldn't sell. It wouldn't sell because boys wouldn't like it, the poster said. I quickly pointed out that girls would buy it, but I should have stopped to think before I replied. I'm sure if I had I would have pointed out that in most cases it's the parents buying and not the little boys. It's the parents that are making the choice of what they want to see in stores. In any case, I know if the internet caused this much uproar about a toy then there must be a demand for it.

Weekend Review: BookPerk App

I'm always looking for something new to read, so I subscribe to a few emails that showcase free books. I noticed an ad for an app at the bottom of one of those emails and decided to check it out. I already have the kindle app and I love it, so I figured this would give me more titles to read on my kindle. I was wrong. The app itself is a reading app and the titles you download are only in the app. None of the books appear to be free, and I rather the design of my kindle. I can't see myself using this app very much so I am planning to delete it after this review.

Weekend Review: Avengers Age Of Ultron

 I know that I need to get back to writing reviews on books, but I haven't been reading very much to be honest. I do love comic books, and I love checking out their adaptions. I did have a problem going into this movie though. This movie was released about a week earlier overseas, which means it was pirated and online already. There were already reviews up on this movie and a lot of them were negative. I wasn't sure that I even wanted to see it, but my boyfriend did so we got tickets and went. I'm glad that we did because it was better than the first. The only thing that I really had an issue with was the Hulk's lack of original story. He's been self loathing since his very first movie, and I understand his self loathing is a big part of his story, but he has so many other story lines that unfold in the comics that it seems to be a shame that this one is the one that keeps getting used. He's also Natasha's love interest, but the romance didn't seem real. It seemed like the romance was there to make flesh out Natasha's character, which they did. Hearing about her past was interesting, but I just don't think she could ever carry a movie. My two new favorite characters were the twins. I was just a little disappointed that they weren't called mutants and there was no Magneto reference. I know the characters are owned by different studios, but it would have been nice. I couldn't get interested in Hawkeye. I did like Thor in this movie, which is unusual since I don't like any of his movies. I never cared for Iron Man either, but here he was decent. Captain America didn't feel like a leader. It felt like everyone was doing their own thing, but I did really like his ending. The action was ok, but it didn't blow my mind.


Four Out Of Five Stars

Writing strong female characters

I love writing strong female characters, but I also think a strong character deserves a good story. I know a lot of people think of Charmed as the perfect example of this, but it isn’t. The characters may have been strong, but the story was weak. It was a monster of the week format where everything was tied up nicely in one or two episodes. There wasn’t any need to keep watching. If you’ve seen one episode of Charmed than you’ve seen them all. While this format may be fine for a standalone book or a movie, it doesn’t work so well in a book series or tv show. Once I’ve seen one episode or read one book there’s no reason to keep reading or watching. It may be great to have a storyline that you can wrap up so quickly, but it won’t keep people reading.