Hey everyone – sorry about the long silence. Here’s where I get to fill you in on everything that I’m doing now!
…I promise, I’ll try not to be boring.I recently returned from my summer graduate school residency in Dublin, Ireland – which was everything I possibly ever could have wanted and more. The country is stunning, the writers were fascinating, the mentors were excellent. I have a wonderful mentor this year, an author by the name of Carlo Gébler, who I think will do an excellent job of forcing me to focus and streamline my novel. Carlo and I don’t see eye-to-eye on everything that’s going to happen in the book, but I think that’s a benefit. If he agreed with me on everything, where would the improvement be? This will make me question every choice I’ve made – and maybe rescind some of them. Some I already have.
That’s the main reason for the silence. In the lead-up to the residency, I wasn’t reading much – other than the second and third books in the Hunger Games series, which I’ll talk about later – so I didn’t have many reviews for you. (Well, no, I think that’s a fib. I have been reading a series, but again – I’ll get to that later.) I’ll be posting the reviews I have to write for my graduate class after they’re sent in, so it may be a while before you see the first one. (That being said, the first one will be on Dennis Lehane’s Shutter Island, and should be posted at the end of next week.)
Which brings me to the other books I’ve been reading! Several of the books I’ve read have been in a series – the Hunger Games series and the Black Jewels series in specific. With books like these, that have already had critical acclaim and do well enough without my help, I’m a little uninspired to write proper reviews about them. HOWEVER. I would like the rest of you to know what I’m reading, and so it doesn’t matter that they’re well known! So. I’ll be doing a review of the Hunger Games as a series as well as the Black Jewels series soon, in addition to Shutter Island and Inferno by Dan Brown, which I just finished recently. I’ll also be posting (possibly first, while it’s fresh in my mind) a review of MCA Hogarth’s recent novel, Mindtouch, which I had the luck to copy edit for her! I’ve reviewed a book of hers before, and am reading a third; I really can’t speak highly enough of this author. But we’ll hear all about that later.
As for now, I have dinner to eat and a book of my own to work on. But I didn’t want you to think that I’d forgotten you – far from! I’ve just been focusing in on ways I can do all of this better for you. I’ll be back again soon!
I am not lost... 