What have I been doing? Writing, mostly. Now that the butterfly season & convention season are over, I’m back on a regular schedule. I’m chewing through my latest project faster than I expected ( I’m still gonna miss my self-imposed deadline, tho. Oh, well.)
And I do take time off to do Other Things. Here be the most recent Doings:
BOOKS.
Long list this time around. For some reason I read faster when I’m writing more. Restricted access to social media also helps.
- Stars Are Legion, Kameron Hurley Space Opera. Organic ships & kickass protagonist.
- Rights Of Use, Shannon Eichorn Space Opera. Aliens. Awesomeness.
- Freelance Familiars, Daniel Potter Fantasy. Sorta portal, urban-feeling, all fun. CATS.
- Eden’s Outcast, Kuta Marler. Urban Fantasy. Fun world & fabulous characters.
- Fated Sky, Mary Robinette Kowal. Science-fiction. Full of humanity. MADE ME CRY.
- Poppy War, R. F Kuang Fantasy. Epic world-building, phenomenal mythology.
- Spinning Silver, Naomi Novik Fantasy with fairy tale roots. Deep & delicious.
- Fluency, Jennifer Foehner Wells Space Opera. Linguistics. <swoon!>
- Sere From the Green, Lauren Jankowski: Urban fantasy. Werewolves. Wonderful richness.
I enjoyed every last one of these books immensely, in totally different ways, and I am working through reviewing them on Amazon & Goodreads. (Amazon gets squirrely and starts refusing to post reviews when I do more than 3 at a time. I should have the last few done later this week.)
VIEWING ETC
I’ve re-watched a buncha movies: Black Panther, Thor: Ragnarok, Avengers: Infinity War I, Lilo&Stitch, Spiderman: Homecoming, Moana… I think I’m in the mood for brain fluff.
That’s about it. I haven’t been watching much TV. Most of the series I’ve been following are between seasons, jumped a whole school of sharks, or have been cancelled. (Law & Order reruns do not count. They’re background noise to fall asleep watching.)
I’ll be asking for viewing recommendations in a month or so. Hibernation season is coming.
There’s new music in my life for the first time in forever. I have a new writing-time soundtrack: Hamilton. I didn’t expect to like it. I am not a big Broadway fan because the voices & songs all sound alike to me. This one? THIS ONE IS DIFFERENT. And excellent. And fabulous.
Kitchen & Garden
September is my favorite month in the garden. I have tomatoes in the freezer to turn into sauce soon, and lots of super-hot little peppers. As soon as we get a cool, damp day, I’ll start transplanting the super-tall mystery plants (some kind of prairie sunflower) into the back of the garden and hack off the seed pods of my ever-enthusiastic senna plants.
Baking season is nearly upon us. I am stocking up on essentials as they go on sale. The big excitement is that I get to indulge in guilt-free baking all through October. My department will be sharing space with two others next month while renovations happen, so I will have three times the usual audience. (The guilt comes from being I’m told over and over, “I shouldn’t be eating these,” / “Oh, no, I’m going to gain so much weight,” / “Oh. You baked again?” Yeah.)
So, anyway, new people to feed, yay!
And autumn is also apple season. Spouseman & I are car-pooling with some friends to take our first orchard trek of the year tomorrow. Cheese, fruit & goodies, here we come.
Yes, the pictures I tack onto my posts are sometimes reruns and mostly random. I love grouchy cats, I will not lie.
7 responses to “Listing my life again”
I watched Infinity war and could not understand it. It was my first Marvel film, but it seemed as the good guys were just loosing the war all the time. I probably missed some stuff that came before it and it didn’t help that I watched it on an airplane around 3 am after not sleeping the whole night. Any ideas?
Infinity War is essentially the beginning of the final chapter in a novel made of…17? 18? movies or more. Or it’s part 1 of the season-ender in a full season of television where each show was 2+ hours long. Either way, I cannot even imagine how confusing it must have been to watch stand-alone.
One need not watch ALL the Marvel Universe movies to get the most out of it, but a knowing the history leading up to the big battle would help explain how they got to that point.
(BTW, you’re so right that the movie is basically one long fight/chase.)
If you feel like investing the time but don’t want to watch 18 movies, here are the ones I consider “main” movies in viewing order:
Iron Man
Captain America: the first Avenger
Avengers
Iron Man 3
Thor: Dark World (skippable, tbh, included only for fun Loki & Thor scenes)
Captain America: Winter Soldier
Avengers: Age of Ultron
Guardians of the Galaxy
Captain America: Civil War
Spiderman Homecoming
Dr. Strange
Black Panther
Thor Ragnarok
You could get a super-condensed idea of the story by starting at Avengers Age of Ultron–but that’s still 7 movies, all designed to set up for Infinity War. Which is only part ONE of the concluding chapter to the whole story.
Talk about a seriously epic story.
This is indeed a lot, are these films also good for kids? Perhaps I’ll start together with them.
would say they’re fine down to 11-12 years old with an adult. There’s no sexual content, and the violence is always of the kind you saw in Infinity War.
There were kids down to maybe 6 in the theaters every time we went, but a number of the youngest ones got bored or confused judging by their comments to parents.
I’ll probably wait then, kids are into star wars now and that is still doable for me and them LOL. I just watched the last three new films including Solo and liked. The only missing is Rogue. I didn’t really grew up with super heroes, in Brazil we have other comics, but Star Wars films were always a thing.
Nice new book cover btw, congrats!
Thank you! I really love it!