A post about a whole bunch of random stuff.

Books first.
I finished seven books this month, although two of them were the same book.... (I read The Great Gatsby twice, as I mentioned before). Three of the books I finished yesterday! The Old Man And The Sea, which I did not particularly care for.... Kailey (and American Girl Doll book. It wasn't all that long. Neither was Old Man and the Sea). Also, A Hero for WondLa, the second book in the WondLa trilogy. I didn't like it as much as the first one. I think it was because of the weird Mother thing in the middle of the Wandering Forest. That was just weird. And Loroc is so creepy! But cool. He makes a cool villain.
Finishing all those books meant that I was only reading two books - and we can't have that! So I started two more. Fever Crumb, by the VERY talented Mr. Philip Reeve. I just finished chapter 5 and I'm really enjoying it! I also started A Year Down Yonder, which is the sequel to A Long Way From Chicago (both by Richard Peck). They are AMAZING books! Super funny... with a trigger-happy grama and illegal cat-fishing and small town charm... go read them.

Now onto writing:
My goal for this month was to edit Part One of After the Twelfth Night.
Done! Yay! I actually finished ten or twelve days ago, so I decided to read through it again, just in case I caught anything else.... and BOY I'm so glad I did. Here's a few of the typos I found....

Pirates are attacking and Matthias says: "Quick! We need a plant!" Instead of 'plan.' I guess a plant could work too... FIGHT THE PIRATE SHIP WITH THE RUMOR WEED! MWAHAHAHAHA. *ahem*
Then, possibly the worst typo EVER! "I'm going to accompany her to Illyria because I don't want her to go alive." Instead of 'alone.'

 

Anyway, Part One is now done for now. I also decided to make the book three parts, instead of two. Because otherwise, Part Two would be TONS longer than Part One. Plus, each part has its own set of characters and its own different location. Now I'm hoping that the parts will be more even in terms of word count/pages.
ALSO I emailed my editors. You know who you are. Some of you have replied... but some of you haven't. I would really like a reply as soon as possible. If you didn't get my email, tell me in a comment and I'll send it again.
Basically I was asking how you like to edit and if you wanted me to send each part separately (so it doesn't look like you have so much work to do :P).
A couple of you said yes, send it in parts. So if the rest of you want me to send it in parts... great! Part One is finished, as I keep on saying; and I wouldn't mind getting it sent off sometime in June, while I'm busy at work with Part Two and Three.

Which brings it to my June writing goals:
Edit Parts Two and Three with my mom and get them sent off to editors by July 14 (when we go camping). This is going to be a bit hard... Because several parts in Part Two need re-writing (aka, just expanding on the idea... showing, not telling the reader). It probably won't be that hard... but I really don't want to do it. I just need to sit down a GET TO IT! But I'm also a bit worried that I won't get Parts Two and Three done by July 14. After all, I took a month to do Part One... Of course, I wasn't editing every day.... procrastination. Heh heh. I also have to change some plot stuff so it corresponds with Part One.
To clear up some trouble: I haven't really made it clear what After the Twelfth Night is. It is basically the continuation of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. Maybe I'll do a post on that later... But yes, it can be seen as a sequel of sorts with Shakespeare's characters and my own characters mixed together.

In other news... Jack tagged all her followers! It's that elevensies tag again... where you have to do 11 random things about yourself, then answer 11 questions, then make up 11 questions, then tag 11 people.
I'm not going to do it that way.
Instead I'm going to do one fact. I got a new bookshelf today! Which is good because my other one was overflowing:

 

Things were stacked on top of each other, on the floor, and behind each other (which I personally HATE!)
My new bookshelf is much wider and taller (six shelves instead of five!) and nearly fits all my books.....

 



At the top is the Vancouver Sun classics, and some other classics (like The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells, some Robert Louis Stevenson, Robin Hood, Pride and Prejudice and Swiss Family Robinson).
Second shelf is Tolkien, then C.S. Lewis, then books I enjoyed when I was younger (and still enjoy!), then my mini E. Nesbit collection, and some more classics (Uncle Tom's Cabin, To Kill A Mockingbird, and The Great Gatsby).
Third shelf is mysteries (Sherlock Holmes, Agatha Christie, and the No Place Like Holmes books) then some dystopian-ish stuff (The Alliance and The Freedom Factor by Gerald N. Lund and Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury) and then some random stuff (Inkheart, Princess Bride, Watership Down....) then my Steampunk (Miss Jack Lewis Baillot, Behemoth and Goliath, and Larklight which I found at the thrift store the other day!).
Fourth shelf is comics (Tintin, Calvin and Hobbes, and Garfield) then some Christian books (Do Hard Things, I Kissed Dating Goodbye, Crater) and finally, my collection of Shakespeare stuff.
Fifth shelf has all my Warriors books in chronological order (yay! I'm happy about that). There's also Varjak Paw on the fifth shelf, which is also a book about cats that live in gangs as opposed to the Warriors who live in the woods.
The last shelf is my American Girl books.
Whew!
My Grama commented once, "Our school librarian once said.. you always have a friend if you have a book. My, you have a lot of friends. And keep getting more!"
Books really are my friends! And if I can continue to get them cheap at the thrift store, I'll continue buying them. =)

Sometime in the near future we're going to move my desk (erm, my thing to stack other things on top of) out my room, and move my other bookshelf back in. I'll have to do some more rearranging then.

 

For Jack's 11 questions, she did something different. She did 11 movie quotes. The people tagged have to guess which movie they came from!

Here I go... wish me luck....

1. "Whew! I thought you were dead!"
I have absolutely no clue. I feel like I should know, though. It isn't Star Trek, is it?

 

 2. "Look! I've found a place where you can put things! It's called a cupboard!"

Is this from Merlin? I haven't seen Merlin... but I think I remember once that you put this quote up your blog and said it was from Merlin. Either that or a saw it online as a picture. My guess is Merlin. Or Psych. Those are my two guesses. Psych and Merlin. I feel like the Spanish Inquisition.

 

 

 3. "Helloooo! I can hear you!"

TINTIN!

I don't know if that's right or not... But in the Castafiore Emerald, Captain Haddock (I think), Iago the parrot, AND Castafiore herself says it.

Whenever I see/hear "hellooooo! I can hear you!" Tintin is the one I think of.

 

 4. "If you had killed Watson you would not have left this room alive."

This one is easy. Sherlock Holmes! The Three Garridebs.

 5. "You're saying I look like a toad?" "Yes. Maybe you will be magically turned into a handsome prince. But since magic is banned it probably won't happen."

I don't know this one either... I'm just gonna randomly guess the new Princess/Frog Disney movie... or Enchanted.

 

 6. "I told you, it will keep and keep and keep and keep!"

Nor this one.

 

 7. "Here's your pan, here's your frog."

Tangled? I think it's from Tangled.

 

 8. "Dishonour on you! Dishonour on your cow!"

Another easy one. Mulan!

 

 

 9. "Should we be hysterical?!" "YES!" "NO!" "Maybe!"

This is another one I feel I should know.

 

 10. "Your mother was a computer and your father an encyclopedia!"

And another one! This one wouldn't happen to be from Arthur would it? Fern's Slumber Party? The scene where she "invents" a supercomputer...

 11. "They were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Naturally they became heroes."

This sounds superhero-ish. But since the only super hero movie I've ever seen is The Incredibles, I don't know.

 

I'm not tagging anyone.

 

How about you guys? How do you store your books? Nicely on shelves? In boxes? Do you have your own bookshelf? Does it bug you when you have to stack your books one on top of the other on the shelf when there isn't any room left? Does it bug you when you have to put them one in front of the other to make them fit (like, double rows)?

And editors: don't forget to answer my email!