🍂Second Sundays - November 2022🦃

Happy Second Sunday!

Thank you for joining me on this adventure. My hope with this newsletter is to provide updates on the books I'm writing, the art I'm creating, and other projects in the works, as well as share some things I've learned and discovered during the past month, provide some inspiration, and engage in more than a bit of nerdiness.

I hope you enjoy!

It's NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), and I've been wading my way through Dragonstone revisions. At first, I was aiming for the traditional 50,000 words in a month, but after a week in, I realized that this number wasn't realistic. Revisions by definition move much slower than the first draft. There are a lot of descriptions to expand upon (or write in the first place), holes to fill, and occasionally some extra research to do (such as the different ways to describe the smell of food). So I amended the word count by half, but even that has proven too ambitious, so we're down to 10,000 words.

My primary purpose with NaNoWriMo is just to get as far through revisions as I can and end with more than I had at the beginning, and I'm definitely winning at that!

So far this month I've revised 1,567 words, with a total draft word count of 7,117. A slow but mighty pace.

Since it is NaNoWriMo, I thought I'd share the Pinterest board I've put together of my own writing tips and prompts. https://www.pinterest.com/fabletalecreations/writing-tips-and-prompts/

As I mentioned in last month's newsletter, Inktober presented a fair share of roadblocks, and ultimately I decided not to move forward with the challenge rather than let the frustration drain my creative juju. Sometimes it's better to change course than to "muscle through" and risk burnout, especially if you're already flirting with the line.

This was the only reading I finished in the last month because I was a bit more focused on recovering from my Inktober downturn by beating Final Fantasy X. 😅

Originally, I picked out this book because it was partially recommended as a "Rumpelstiltskin retelling." That's one of my favorite Grimm fairy tales, and I love a good retelling, but Small Favors turned out not to be what I expected. It was less a retelling and more of a YA fiction story with some slight horror and fantasy additions with a very small dash of Rumpelstiltskin-like themes.

It was a good story overall. Very well-written and a kind of "light suspense" or "light horror" novel that fits in with the spooky season. I'm definitely not deterred from reading other stories by this author. I think the primary reason I didn't enjoy the story as much as I could have is because I misunderstood the genre it really is. So allowing for that mistake on my part, I'll give the book a 7/10.

I have big plans for finishing out the reading year. I'm trying to guide myself back into adult fantasy by doing a clean sweep of my current fantasy TBRs, so here's a look at my planned stack for the rest of November and December and into the new year:

This month, this section is basically me confessing a new obsession: Dungeons & Dragons.

I've been flirting around the RPG on and off for the last 20 years or so, but even though I knew people who played the game, I was never invited to participate and never got around to taking the time to learn how to play on my own. But my "official initiation" to the game happened last month when a friend introduced me to these EPIC videos: Relics and Rarities

Now that I understand what this game is about and I see the potential for what a good game can be, I CAN NOT BELIEVE I WAITED SO LONG! 😱 I mean, this game has my name written ALL OVER IT.

I spent a lot of last month brainstorming with my friend, building characters, and getting immersed in the world. It is so much fun already, and we haven't even had our first campaign! Even better, this immersion is fueling my creative fire, and I finally see what some of my classmates in art school were talking about when they suggested that I think about doing creature or bestiary illustrations for people who play D&D and similar games.

So all this is to say, I am OBSESSED, and there are inevitably some D&D-inspired stories and illustrations in my future.🤓

I discovered these little duders through Jake Parker's newsletter months ago and was just kind of waiting for the perfect time to share them. They are called Beacorns, and they are created by David M. Bird. He builds the acorn people, then stages them in a perfect spot, and waits and WAITS, hoping for a woodland creature to come up and interact with them for the perfect shot.

There's so much storytelling happening in these adorable photos it's easy to be inspired by them!

I hope everyone has been able to embrace the spirit (and food!) of the holiday season so far, and I'll see you again in December!