As I think I’ve mentioned before, I had originally intended to write Cloned Evil as a serialized series but just couldn’t get the arcs to come together into anything fully cohesive. I had middles, I had ends, I had a couple beginnings, but I didn’t have all three for any of the arcs. I didn’t even have two for most of them! But here are some of the loose ideas I did have that I might possibly explore during this publishing break:
Gigi meets her sisters and Red immediately tries to murder her
Bea gets mad at Red and accidentally gives her an accen
Rescuing mom from prison at 9 years old after Aunt Jez training them
Aunt Jez and mom talking about Eve
Their babysitter for when Aunt Jez and mom are busy
Bea and Mars meeting for the first time
Let me know which ones interest you the most! Who knows, you might see it one day!
Let’s get back to some fiction and back to the long list of books I have randomly bookmarked in the library! Today’s selection is a mystery thriller that had a podcast angle that I’m pretty sure I picked out because I was in a true crime phase.
The book mostly follows Anna, a babysitter in Herron Mills who bears a striking resemblance to a missing girl named Zoe Spanos. Though she is there to turn over a new leaf, her resemblance to Zoe is affecting her and everyone around her until the day they find her body and Anna confesses to the murder of this girl she has never met. At the same time, we follow Martina, a girl with a true crime podcast specifically about Zoe Spanos and her quest to find the truth on behalf of her best friend and Zoe’s younger sister.
I honestly would not categorize this as a mystery and would not recommend going in with the expectation of figuring out what happens before they reveal it. Clues aren’t left so much as they are revealed at the time of the twist that they cause. The truth of the cause of death and motive isn’t even revealed until the epilogue, so it will be very frustrating if you’re going in with the intent of solving it.
It is an interesting story, but I did find Anna’s memory and her spiraling moments where she is having memory issues to happen more in line with when the story needed it to happen as opposed to being an actual character trait. I also didn’t find that the podcast element really added anything to the story, though that may be more because I didn’t think the way that they showed a podcast in writing to be as engaging as an actual podcast and that it lost something in the translation.
Overall, though, it was an interesting read. I thought it was a fine read, not one I would go back to but one that I was entertained by while I was there.
Despite the fact that I have historically just not liked self help books and books about how to live a better life, I keep reading them. I keep vowing not to do this anymore, but I had a moment and put a hold on this one at the library, forgot about it, and it was recently available for me again. So back in I go!
I found myself pleasantly surprised by this one, probably because it’s the first one that spoke my language. That language being that of a product designer. The book is largely filled with anecdotes and approaches to take to help you research and discover a new path in life if you are stuck, and to reframe the questions so that you can better get answers.
I’m sure some of this is because I work as a product designer by day, but I found it to be interesting to see how those research methods I am used to or familiar with could be repurposed for self discovery and planning for the future. I also quite liked the idea of trying things out in smaller capacities first and iterating on it once you get a better understanding as opposed to heading all in on a plan without doing the research or a trial run.
I’ve heard that these kinds of books are very hit or miss and it just requires you to find a book that speaks to you. I think this was the one that ultimately was done in a way that worked for me. I don’t know that I’ll take everything in it verbatim, but it did provide an interesting starting point for how I am going to approach the new year! It was definitely worth checking out.
With more and more people getting into audiobooks, and with Audible advertising just about everywhere these days, I’ve seen a lot of conversations about whether or not authors should make their books available in audiobook format. It’s a new and exciting thing, so should you get in on it?
Why you shouldn’t make audiobooks
It’s expensive
There’s a bit of cost upfront if you are hiring a voice actor to read your book. Hiring someone will ensure that you have someone who can help you create a quality product, but the cost can be daunting.
People don’t consume audiobooks in the same way as ebooks or physical books
This is not to say everyone, but generally speaking, audiobooks are more likely to be played in the background while the listener is performing another task. The focus is often not entirely on the book in the same way, which means that more complicated narratives may not work as well in the format.
Why you should make audiobooks
You could do it yourself
If you have a good reading voice and the ability to produce quality audio, you could do your own audiobook reading. It is time-consuming, and you will likely need to learn how to produce your own audio, but it could be done!
You’ll reach a new audience
There’s a growing audience of people who consume only audiobooks. This can be viewed as an entirely new audience, one that might have never checked out your work before without access to this format of your books.
There’s less competition
Currently, the audiobooks market is not as flooded with content as either the paperback or ebook markets. It’s still largely considered early for the market, which means getting in now will provide more opportunities for anyone trying to get in.
Will I be doing audiobooks?
I will not be doing audiobooks of any of my novels any time soon. I have certain auditory processing issues that make it really hard for me to listen to anything for a long time, which is kind of required for audiobook production. It may happen one day! But I don’t see those coming any time soon.
Also, I just don’t have a very good reading voice. I would need to train a little if I were to produce it myself, or I’d need to sell a whole lot more books if I were going to hire someone.
Write Your Story: Unlock Your Creative Potential
Are you ready to embark on a journey into the world of storytelling? Look no further! Introducing Write Your Story, a comprehensive resource designed to fuel your imagination, enhance your storytelling skills, and bring your characters to life. Whether you’re an aspiring writer, a seasoned author, or simply someone who loves crafting stories, this workbook is your ultimate companion.
I have been bullet journalling for years, but I’ve never really looked at the book from the guy who started it all. I looked at the articles and now have a significantly different system in place than the ones I started with, but I figured might as well get a refresher on what the actual system’s intent.
The book takes a bit of a sandwich approach to explaining the method. At the start, it’s a lot of very practical tips, tricks, and steps to set up your very first bullet journal. The ideas are great, and it gets you set up to start with the habit and start to see the ways in which it can work for your life. The end also has a lot of practical advice, particularly when it comes to talking about the boom of the aesthetic bullet journal practice that makes it look as if you have to be an artist in order to do it.
You don’t, by the way. You just need to find a way to make it work for you.
The middle took a bit of a strange turn. The framing of it is to talk about the other ways you can use a bullet journal other than just keeping it as a planner and to do list. It feels like a loose framework to talk about how the method has been motivational and substantially changed the lives of the people who have used it, which felt weird. It’s a way to keep organized, which can be life changing? But it felt like a bit much.
Overall, it’s great for if you want to get started and try it out. Now is a fantastic time to try out new things, and this is one of the rare self help things I think can actually be practically useful.
Another year done and this last year brought a lot of reading! I am pretty surprised, but the year has been pretty mediocre if I’m being honest. But it has also been a year of more random reads without properly vetting them first. Here are my favourite reads of the last year!
This one was so cute and I think you should also check it out. I’m on the hunt for more by this author after checking out this one and I’m looking forward to reading more.
The story behind me starting to make bottle charms was an accident. I got the bottles to put paper stars into. The problem was that they are too small for the stars to fit inside.
I saw something online. Somewhere. I think it was an idea posted to a wedding group as something to put on tables for the guests to take at the end of the night. Some kind of decoration. Hopefully they weren’t making enough of these for everyone to take home, or that they had a very small wedding, because these are not as easy to make as I’d hope for a wedding.
On the other hand, they’re very relaxing to make. And they’re pretty cute.
Unfortunately for me, I have no idea what I’m going to do with them all. Please take them from me.
Last book review of the year and I opted for something that I’d been hearing good things about! Cult stories and a hint of something supernatural sounded just about right for me, so I figured this one would be great.
The story follows Lo, a young woman who has not seen her sister since a tragic accident killed her parents and left her scarred. Lo has been working for a journalist and aspires to be one herself, but has also been trying to get in touch with her sister who has been stuck in a cult for the last several years. When the cult leader, Lev, offers to give her exclusive access to her, she has an opportunity to achieve both things: Find her sister and get her byline at last. But the cult is alluring and her sister is far more elusive than she bargained for.
This story is slow and makes the choice to not include many chapter breaks, which is a new trend that I’m not fond of. It’s meant to show how cults trap desperate people in them, but it takes a very long time to get there. We have shifting perspectives between Lo in the present and her sister, Bea, in the past which… well, I figured out one of the twists pretty early on from that context alone.
I think I would have liked this a lot more if I didn’t already have an interest in cults and a general understanding of options. There was a point early in the story where I wondered why, when Lo wasn’t able to get her byline, she didn’t just pay the $6 for a Medium subscription and publish there. That she is completely isolated without even an online community, and the only communities talked about are Instagram and Facebook, which she explicitly does not have ((Instagram, at least)) for reasons that are not listed felt bizarre. It feels artificial and like a lot of the circumstances around her actions are contrived to make the story work.
And don’t get me started on that turning point where the cult is suddenly good actually because there is a child. The last third of the book felt like things were happening because there was a place this story was meant to go and didn’t feel like the logic connected with the first half.
Overall, it was probably fine. I think I was just not in the mood for it and found myself poking holes in the premise where I wouldn’t if I was. The writing is still good, so it might be more for you.
Since I’ve dipped my foot into the writing superheroes ring, and because I fully intend to go back to it again, I have been wanting more superhero novels. And when I can’t find those, I’ll happily take a recommendation for a villain one instead.
The story follows Anna, a temp henchman who ends up taking a job that goes horribly wrong. When she is actually brought into the field, she ends up injured by one of the heroes so poorly that she loses the job and ends up out of commission for months. In this time, she starts to put her spreadsheet skills to the test, doing the math on how destructive heroics really are in terms of the cost of the lives caught in the crossfire. Her skills are eventually uncovered by another villain who brings her into his employ and gives her the resources to bring the heroes down with the power of math.
I really enjoyed this book. It feels like it hits a sweet spot between Powers and Doctor Horrible in the portrayal of the mundane elements of superheroes that can be taken to an extreme with the right motivation. You do have to accept the premise of the universe, which I’ve seen a lot of reviews unable to do, but if you can it’s really a lot of fun. Anna is not someone who is supernatural and portrayed very much as someone who is working a corporate job that just happens to be evil.
I will grant you that I work in tech, so evil for hire is just something I find relatively believable. I would still say it’s a great read if you’ve liked something like The Boys or Invincible or any of those other 2000s comics that are being made into media franchises now. It has a lot of the same ideas, with a few small updates.
When working on your worldbuilding, adding a few distinct subcultures in your fictional populations can be an easy way of making the world feel richer and larger than it really is. But how do you create them?
First, a definition:
A subculture is a group of people within a culture that differentiates itself from the parent culture to which it belongs, often maintaining some of its founding principles.
Subcultures can take a lot of different forms, from something as large to other races to something as small as a family. If you’re doing a fantasy story, it could be those with learned magic, those who were born with magic, and people who do not use magic at all. So long as there is something about this group that differentiates them from the wider culture that also makes them similar to one another.
The interplay between the subcultures is what tends to make this interesting in fiction. Seeing how their values or norms conflict with or complement one another can help to make the world seem larger, and give the implication of history without having to come up with specific details that might distract from the main story you’re trying to tell.
Here are a few elements you can use to differentiate people in a subculture:
