Thursday is the new Tuesday!
Writing This Week: I am currently pounding out a new chapter of The Queen in the Wooden Box. I’ve been wanting to TKT (yes, I do use that as a verb…years of TKTing has caused that), but my priority this week is cousin-pleasing! Although, I suppose, I don’t know exactly how much they’re enjoying the story because they’ve only just gotten into it and can’t be completely hooked yet. They’re probably a bit impatient, having waited several weeks now for me to make good on my promise of new chapters!
Reading This Week: I sampled two Kindle books this past week. The first was Beyond the Reflection’s Edge by Bryan Davis. The hook really intrigued me, and so far the plot has drawn me in, but I didn’t find the characters very genuine, emotionally, so I’m not sure I’ll be buying that one at the moment. The second sample was from Auralia’s Colors by Jeffrey Overstreet, which I’ve been wanting to read for several years now. His books are highly praised from all I hear, so I had high expectations, and I was not disappointed! The writing is beautiful. In fact, just now I discovered that the Kindle edition is twice the price of the paperback, which is on “limited availability” on Amazon for $5.60. STEAL! I snapped it up. It may not be streamed instantly to my Kindle, but I’m looking forward to seeing that in my mailbox in a couple of days.
Quote of the Day:
“God’s grace is a tsunami that will carry us away and deposit us in places we would not have anticipated — and all of it good. We analyze this carefully and say that we want our grace to be true and pure water, just like that tsunami, but we want it to be a placid pond on a summer day that we can inch across gingerly, always keeping one pointed toe on what we think is the sure bottom of our own do-gooding morality. As the old blues song has it, everyone wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die. Everyone wants to cross the Jordan, but nobody wants to get wet.” – Doug Wilson
Deep and Important Thoughts Pondered Today: All day I’ve been mulling over this post at Speculative Faith, and the thoughts sparked by it. Feminism, and its impact on stories. Perceived sexism in books/movies/shows (and Hollywood’s misguided attempts to correct it). “Warrior women”. True, strong feminine characters – as opposed to female characters who act like men. Damsels in distress. How I hope to write truly strong feminine characters who don’t need to (if you’ll pardon the expression) “kick butt” in order to be strong. I sense a blog series coming on…
Funny Today: My son’s hysterical giggling at my husband’s gargling after dinner. 🙂
Stuck in My Head Today: Primarily awesome Doctor Who music like this.
*New Category!* Tasty Foods Eaten Today: I had to add this category, because…I love food, and I can’t not talk about it! The tasty food for today is a mug cake which I ate with Moose Tracks ice cream and chocolate syrup over the top. Yum!! (And when the recipe says it makes “1 large or 2 small”…it really does mean large. Good grief!)
I’d love to see a series of posts about that! At least in my experience, it can be hard to write the middle ground between a character with a head full of fluff and one that’s completely unfeminine. I can think of a bunch of examples that fit, though. Jane Eyre, Jo March from Little Women (or at least she becomes so), several characters from L. B. Graham’s Binding of the Blade series, and I think I will stop there. 🙂 Robert Jordan’s books starting with the Eye of the World are supposed to have strong female characters. But, I haven’t read them (yet!) so I can’t judge. But yes, more on that subject would be wonderful!
Hopefully I will write a series about that! Hmm, I do notice a lot of fluff-minded characters and a lot of unfeminine characters, but I can definitely name many female characters who are both feminine and intelligent.