If you’ve visited my blog before, or even followed me on twitter, you may have noticed that I like to make covers for books. Some examples include one for the NaNo that has just gone by, and pretty much everything in my portfolio.
Monthly Archives: December 2016
A few years is a lifetime in YA: #YesGayYA is probably so far back that at least some people are not aware of what exactly happened.
The short version is this: Brown and Smith co-wrote a post-apocalyptic YA book, STRANGER, featuring a diverse cast and 5 POV characters. During their search for an agent for this book (they were already agented, only separately) they wrote a post on Publishers Weekly where they revealed that an unnamed agent had asked them to either remove the POV of one character, or change/hide an intrinsic part of him.
You may not have figured this out, but I live in New Zealand. (Yes, it is the place where they filmed Lord of the Rings. No, it’s not part of Australia.) While a lot of the media we consume here is imported – mostly from the US and then the UK, as well as Australia – we have our own creatives producing movies, TV shows, and of course books.
Each year I tell myself that I am going to read more NZ books, and each year I either do it or I don’t. So to get me started for the next round, here is 5 NZ books I plan to read in 2017. Wish me luck.
Lately I have been having fun making (and colouring) mandala patterns, and I thought I would share a couple of them for you to print and colour in as well. Colouring in is fun, and I know this time of year can be stressful. The mandala are in one .pdf file, zipped with the example images you see below.
I’ll be the first to admit it: I’m not a picture book’s target audience. Right now I neither have children of my own nor do I work with children young enough to appreciate them anymore. (Protip: If you’re taking a dozen five year olds camping, always always take all the Hairy Maclary books. You’ll need them.) But there is one picture book that I pick up every so often and re-read solely as an adult who thinks it’s a great book.
So, like any good bookworm, I have a to-real pile. Although when I look at it properly – and especially if I were to add in the ebook library – it would be more like a tower. There are a lot of memes out there dedicated to showing off unread books, but if I were to give one book a week some focus it would take forever. And I suspect I am not the only one in this position.
So behold, five tales from my to-read tower: one adult, one YA, one non-fiction, one comic/manga, and one audiobook.
Like the rest of the world it seems sometimes, I too got caught up in the wave that was Attack on Titan (Shingeki no Kyojin in Japan). There was an explosion of cosplayers at Armageddon immediately after, and I was infinitely grateful that Madman NZ had the entire subbed series on their site for viewing. I binged it then, and now that I have Netflix I’m watching it again (the dub this time, because I like to compare these things).
From the first time I saw the opening credits I knew the show was something special. I mean, how can Feuerroter Pfeil und Bogen not pump you up?
The first of December means two things for me. The first is that it’s my birthday. The second is NaNoWriMo is finally over! I didn’t win, which came as no surprise as I previously blogged about giving up (and why that’s not always a bad thing). Also, earthquakes suck.
So to celebrate, I am posting a small fragment of The Cantia Covenant, which I have dubbed How Einar Got A Job Instead Of Arrested. Be warned: it is terrible in all the ways a NaNo novel can be. The only edits have been to fully excise the segments I would have deleted while writing, only instead struckthrough because NaNo.