[FEB UPDATE] Cephalopod Book Club & Goals

I'm on time this time!! Woo!

~ The Cephalopod Coffeehouse Book Club : February Edition ~

This is definitely one of my fave books read in the last few years - which was a surprise, because I'm not religious, so not particularly into the romantic notion of angels, etc. However, these angels weren't romantic - they were jerks!

After reading Book #1, I wasn't entirely sure whether Raffe was a jerk or not, because what did he really think of the invasion of the angels? We didn't have much insight into his opinion by the end of this book - he always went silent whenever Penryn showed any distress over the state of the world she once lived in, a world largely destroyed by angels.

I quickly moved on to reading Book #2, and I enjoyed it as well. I did notice some unflattering reviews of Books #2 and particularly #3. And I have since read them both - thankfully I enjoyed them all. I must say though, that of all the books, Book #1 was the most incredible - fast-paced, action-packed, horrifying, and all in all a real page-turner. Generally, any book that makes me feel compelled to keep reading it, is a winner.

Currently Reading: Sarah Maas's Throne of Glass

~ Do You Have Goals? : February Edition ~

Last time I posted about my goals, I mentioned that I was working on preliminary edits for ON THE OUTSIDE. Since then, I have updated my blog mentioning that I cut out a large number of words from Chapter 1, a very troublesome chapter (same old story). Well, I haven't done much since then. I've been grappling with the other things in my life, and the editing as fallen away. However, I still have the burning desire to keep going with it.

My studies began this week, so I have to factor them in (which I'm not doing too well at so far). I'm also still busy with kitty rescue stuff, but am trying to pull back from that a little. It so happens it's the busiest time of year for Aussie cat rescues, with lots of kittens being born during the summer months, and lots of people going on holiday and dumping their cats at the pound as they were too disorganised to find / pay for holiday care well ahead of time. We are all eager for this year's "kitten season" to end, though many in rescue say that kitten season never really ends.

So with all that, the editing has fallen away again. But I hope to at least get a little bit of it done this weekend. I'm still pleased about cutting out 8 pages of Chapter 1, though, even if I do have to add some of it back in for the remains to make sense.

[JAN UPDATE] Cephalopod Book Club & Goals

I am posting this a day late, but I really wanted to post it because I think the last time I posted one of these was in October last year!! I want to be better at keeping up with the few blog hops I actually still participate in, in 2016.

~ The Cephalopod Coffeehouse Book Club : January Edition ~

I wasn't really sure what to expect from this read, but what I got was something different to what I sort of-maybe-kinda expected. It was a really enjoyable and engrossing read, even though I sometimes don't like books that skip around a lot with time, which this did.

What I found impressive about this book was that I was interested in every character I was reading about, which when there are a lot of characters in a book, sometimes fails to happen. I found the whole story haunting but beautifully written. As I read along, I was constantly wondering who would survive and who wouldn't. The story managed to frequently surprise me, too.

It really made me think about all the things in this world we all take for granted, like electricity, planes flying in the air, etc. Imagine if all that went away!

Currently Reading: Susan Ee's Angelfall

~ Do You Have Goals? : January Edition ~

Oh, gosh. Do I have goals? Last time I wrote about this, I was working on SUNDOWN III. Slowly, but still, I was working on it! Since then, I wrote 50k during NaNo, we had Christmas, I went to hospital with a cat bite, and I've now gone back to work.

I'm no longer working on SUNDOWN III. Yep, once again I've abandoned an editing project only to move onto another one. I am now looking at ON THE OUTSIDE. I want to try to get large edits done (this involves rewriting some scenes, removing other scenes, and general polishing).

I've also done a bit of recording for my next album, which my bandmate Billy is now back at work on, making new sounds and tweaking old ones like a madman. We have all the songs done in terms of music, but he has redone a few guitar parts and most of the drums, and has a bit more to do. It's largely up to me to get on with vocals. Some of the songs I'm already happy with, and others not so much. Some are only in rough 'draft' form.

So those are my two major goals at this time. Getting vocals done for "WAG Album #2" as I refer to it, and getting major editing stuff done for ON THE OUTSIDE.

[OCT UPDATE] Cephalopod Book Club & Goals

~ The Cephalopod Coffeehouse Book Club : October Edition ~

I've been meaning to read this book for ages, and have only just got around to it.

It was a pleasure to read a book that was well written, as well as witty and entertaining. Jordan sure can write.

I am not religious at all, and the heroine in this book is Mormon, but the story doesn't preach to the reader about religion or anything - her being Mormon is just another aspect of her character (albeit one that does effect her decisions and sometimes complicates her job as a spy) that you get to know.

The book is mostly taken up with spine-tingling action, and that's the way I like it to be! There's also a little bit of romantic sweetness, in case you were wondering. :)

Thanks for the fun read, Jordan McCollum!

~ Do You Have Goals? : October Edition ~

During October, I've continued to do some work on SUNDOWN III. It's slowed down a bit though, I'll admit. But I have done some rearranging of chapters, merging some short ones, and have continued on my quest to convert the story to third person. I know there will be some gaps in chapters to come, that I'll need to fill in. I've already filled in one significant gap. But of course November is coming up, so I won't be doing much work on this novel revision during that month.

So, speaking of November, my goal is the usual one - to get a new novel written. The title is THE PHOTOGRAPH and the story is what you'd call a drama, I guess. But it'll also be a romance, I think ... though at the moment it's not feeling very romantic to me! So I guess we'll see how it goes.

I hope to update regularly during November... for a change. My poor blog is a little dusty of late!

Reading goal = Writer Blogger novels

One of my goals for a while now has been to read as many of my blogger writer friends' books as I can. Sometimes these authors are people I don't really know but am still only aware of because of the writer blogger community I'm a part of. But often they're people I do consider to be friends.

I did make quite a bit of progress this year, with reading the following books:

• Breakthrough - Stephen Tremp
• That Fatal Kiss - Mina Lobo
• Healing Summer - Elizabeth Seckman
• Reborn - Cherie Reich
• CassaStar - Alex J. Cavanaugh
• CassaFire - Alex J. Cavanaugh
• CassaStorm - Alex J. Cavanaugh
• Motocross Me - Cheyanne Young
• Three Daves - Nicki Elson
• The Trouble With Flying - Rachel Morgan
• The Shadows Trilogy - Jolene Perry
• Not Your Fault - Cheyanne Young
• Nobody Knows - Kyra Lennon
• Dragonfly - Leigh Talbot Moore
• Strength - Carrie Butler

And I'm currently reading:

• The Summer I Found You - Jolene Perry

Obviously I still have heaps of books yet to read, that you guys have written. But I'm quite happy with the progress I made this year.

A goal in the new year is to use some of my "leftover at the end of pay period" dollars & cents to buy copies of your books that I haven't bought yet. But that will probably be a slow, gradual process. For now, I've got plenty of your books still on my Kindle not yet read. And I also have at least one or two print copies on my bookshelves to read, too. Wheeee!

Some things I've learned so far (about blogging)

I thought I'd put up a quick list of things I've learned since starting my blog. Some are pretty obvious but they're things I didn't know at the start of my blogging adventure:

1. If someone follows you, it's polite to follow back - if I forgot to follow you back, do let me know please ;)
2. It's good if you have a link to your blog somewhere on your Blogger profile (or Google+ profile as the case may be)
3. When you switch your blog's URL

• you need to change a lot of links from previous posts, as well as in your blog pages
• all your stats get brought to the new blog, and yet Google still knows that your old blog is the one that got all the visits, so it takes time to get the new blog as well known by the Google bots - a really good way of helping this is participating in the A to Z challenge ;)
4. You can list your most popular posts by weekly, monthly or "all time" popularity (thanks Father Dragon for the tip!)
5. Captcha is really annoying and you can't even tell if you have it set to "on" without checking, because your own comments post just fine. Also, for some unlucky blogs, not having Captcha on means getting heaps of spam (so glad this isn't me!)
6. There's no accounting for which posts of yours are going to get the most views - sometimes there seems to be no rhyme or reason to it!
7. Blogfests/hops are a great way to meet new bloggers and get activity on your blog! Plus, they're excellent for those times when you're having a lack of inspiration and need ideas for what to post!
8. Image copyright is something really important to respect
9. The top commenters widget I'm using appears to be buggy :)

I'm sure there's heaps more I could add, but I can't think of it right now. And yes, that is meant to be a lightbulb. :)

Blog stats - a vicious cycle?

Have you guys ever checked out your blog stats and gone, "Why the heck is THAT my most-visited post?" I've been doing that for many months now, and wondering if my most visited posts are only that because they've been the "most visited" in my list for a long time now, so they are naturally the ones that new visitors are going to check out when they first pop over to my blog. To get further into what I mean, these are my top 6 posts:

• The ay to zee challenge (2011) wrap up post! (4553 visits)
• Every time I think I don't have to post for at least one day... (3240 visits)
• Travel Series: NEW ZEALAND (650 visits)
• A-Z blogging challenge "V" - Voltron (and...) (539 visits)
• Did I Notice Your Book? - blogfest (473 visits)

Some of those I can understand being popular on their own merit, i.e. the one about my 1998 travels in New Zealand (NZ is so in right now, thanks to LotR and so on), and maybe the Voltron post - I mean, Voltron is legendary! Seriously, though, I really do think that these posts get so many visits only because they're listed as most popular and already have heaps of visits. For e.g., the "Every time I think..." post consists of very little of great value, and yet it's my 2nd most popular post by far.

What do you think?

We're all just recycling

I'm weird, and I love it!

Do you ever get the impression that you can't possibly come up with anything new to talk about on your blog, 'cause it's all been said before? I do, all the time. However, I still write blog posts.

If possible I try to make them about my own creative projects, because there are already amazing bloggers out there who are doing the other hard work for me (the teaching, the sharing of their own hard-earned wisdom about writing, the industry and so on). I can go to those people's blogs and learn from what they're teaching, instead of focusing on imparting my own dubious wisdom. Oh, don't get me wrong, I think I'm totally wise. ;) Just in other ways than this, perhaps. I'm definitely still learning and I know that is something all of us can say. But I've never, ever wanted to be a teacher, and I guess that comes through in my blogging as well.

I suppose I'm more of a sharer instead of a leader/teacher/shower (and by 'shower' I don't mean, ya know, hop in the shower, I mean show-er).

So I try to focus on doing my own thing, and talking about it here in my blog. Not that that's got me very far lately, since I haven't been a frantically busy blogger. But it's generally what I do think about when I come here and prepare to write a blog post.

What is your blog about? (and it can be about many things at once!)
Do you use your blog more to sort out your own creatively tangled head (as I do) or do you aim for it to be a tool that visitors can use?
Are you more of a sharer or a show-er?

Keeping up with the bloggers I lurve

So, lately (say, in the last few months? Possibly longer?) I've given up on Reader. That is, Google Reader, which for a while there I used to keep track of all the blogs I'd followed (hundreds of blogs, let me tell you). I kept having to mark everyone as read 'cause I'd get in there and there'd be 500 unread posts, or 700, or the dread 1000+ (I don't WANT to know how many there really are). So I've given up. And now I'm relying on my blog roll to keep me in touch with the blogs I like to read. As well as reciprocating for comments I get on my blog.

But I keep stumbling across writers I've lost track of, and haven't yet got around to adding to my blogroll. If I used to comment on your blog a fair bit, then dropped off the face of the earth, only to recently resurface, now you know why. If I still haven't resurfaced, it's 'cause I haven't added your blog to my roll yet. That sounds funny..."your blog to my roll." Anyway, if I've forgotten you, please let me know. Oh, and a note to anyone who's followed my blog but doesn't have a link to theirs in their Blogger profile...maybe add a link so I can find you? AND I still hate the word 'blog'. For such a hater, I've used it a lot in this post!

Now, since I'm here, I might as well do a really quick rundown on my writing/revising status: 1) NAUSICAA revision started, but progressing slowly; 2) this week's Chrysalis story not yet started; 3) I can't remember the third thing I'm meant to be doing. Oh wait, I think I'm doing it right now - writing in this blog.

How do you keep up with the blogs you love to read?