I completed the A-Z Reading Challenge!

At the beginning of the year, I joined in the A to Z reading challenge originally hosted at Ginger moms Read but since then they have a new blog so I’m going to link to new blog  Ginger Mom and Company. If you haven’t heard of this challenge before the basic premise is to read a book that starts with each letter of the alphabet. Today I decided to share that I completed the challenge and tell you a little about the journey to finishing.

When I signed up for this challenge I really wanted to try my hardest to only use books that started with the correct letter. I know we could take a cheat for hard letters but I love a good challenge so I had a lot of fun hunting down books that interested me to try to squeeze into the reading challenge. I didn’t really focus on the reading challenge until the last quarter of the year and then I buckled down on the harder letters of the alphabet.

The Writer Tag 20 Questions

This month I am participating Nanowrimo so I thought it would be fun to do a couple of writing posts this month. So the first one I saw was this one so I thought it was a really fun looking one so here we are.

1. What type of writing do you do? 

I like to write novels usually long chunky books versus short books. I also occasionally write short stories but it is really rare

2. What genres and/or topics do you write about?

My main genre is usually Fantasy but I also like writing romance, paranormal, and contemporary. Almost all of my stories have an element of romance in them since its my favorite genre.

My Fall (shows) Lineup

This fall I have a ton of amazing shows that I am really enjoying. The fall lineup this year is absolutely amazing and I have a new show to watch almost every day in the week (other than Saturday). There are a lot of amazing shows and I am so excited to share with you what I am watching right now.

I’m participating in NaNoWriMo!

I’m so excited to announce that I’m participating in Nano this year!

If you’ve never heard of NaNoWriMo before its an amazing event. The acronym stands for National Novel Writing Month however it has become an international sensation and great motivation for writers everywhere in which writers commit to try to “Win NaNo” by writing 50,000 words in a month. NaNo has had a lot of changes in since the original website launched including the chance to change your word count, interact with other writers, and share your progress. If you’d like to check it out here is the official link for the website.

I struggled with deciding if I wanted to join in NaNoWriMo this year. Life right now is really stressful but its as good of a time as any to try to write a book that has been in my head for a really long time.

I’m mostly a pantser but this year I am trying to plan a little bit of the plot to help me make my way through November instead of being really stressed out throughout the month. I’ve made a Pinterest board that you can check out here if you’d like to see some of my inspiration for my writing project. Also, I created a new NANo page and I’m always happy to add people as writing buddies. So if you’re interested you can check out my profile here.

I’m really excited to get started writing my project! So I thought I would share a little about my WIP I’m still working it all out so I only have a rough idea of what I’m hoping to write.

The main theme for my story is…..

My story takes place in a fantasy setting where people are classed based on the powers they posess. Those with desirable powers are prized and rewarded and those with “useless” powers are treated badly. My main character is running a rebel group from the background (where she is most comfortable ) with her 2 adoptive brothers. Besides the revolution that they are trying to lead they are also struggling to keep their identities secret, hide the fact they aren’t “elite”, and deal with the politics of the “elite” court.

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It’s really hard summarizing my plot right now but I am having so much fun trying to plan it out and I’m itching to get started as soon as I possibly can. I also know there is going to be a romance element in my story but I don’t know if it is going to be a large part of this story or if it will be more prominent in the next book in the series. I’m thinking there will just be a lot of tension.

I’ve also discovered my local area has a writing group for Nano so I’m excited to go to a couple of the local meetings.

Are you participating in NaNoWriMo this year? Best of luck!

New Series: Arya Tries

Hey guys! I am so excited to share with you guys my new series!

Arya Tries is my take on a trend I’ve been seeing on Booktube. Basically, if you haven’t been watching Booktube (give it a try it is awesome) A lot of booktubers are making vlogs where they challenge themselves to read in a specific way for a week or even longer and I wanted to join in. To get a better idea of what I’m talking about I’m going to link a couple of  Kayla’s videos from Books and Lala. Following someone’s TBR, Reading her average daily pages for a month, and Books controlling what she eats for 24 hours.

There are tons more amazing videos out there doing similar challenges but Kayla was the first I saw doing this and I feel so inspired to try to do something similar on my blog. I’m too shy and awkward to make a vlog or a video but I do have this platform so I am really excited to try some of the ideas I have as well as some tried and true concepts on Booktube.

One of the things I want to try for myself is focusing on a genre or a trope and sharing my thoughts as I read through that theme. I tend not to read the same types of books back to back so I never really delve into the “meat” of a theme or really decide if I like them or not so I think it could be really fun to read a whole bunch of the same type of books back to back and share my thoughts. It could be a really fun experiment.

I also have some non-bookish challenges that I am interested in trying out as well that I will be sprinkling in throughout the series. These types of posts do take a lot longer to create so it is going to be a little while before the first one is posted since I’m just now setting the first one up but I am really excited about it and sharing with all of you my adventure.

Some of the topics I plan to cover include

• Reading my average page count daily
• listening to audiobooks exclusively for the month
• Eating food from books I’ve read
• Reading books in their original published language (not English)
• Trope Studies
• Exploring reading awards
• Re-reading  childhood books
• Following Celebrity book clubs

Right now I’m working on my first post in this series and I am really excited to share it with you guys. I have a general idea of how I want to do this challenge but it’s going to be a while before the post goes live since I’m just starting the first challenge now. I have a lot planned and I’m honestly so pumped to get this challenge going.