Over On Nayu's Crochet Dreams #7 The week runs away from me

Find out exactly what's been going on this week with Eeyore over on my craft blog, Nayu's Reading Corner.

Nayu's News #215: Book Reviewing & Book Writing

Hot chocolate with a stack of books is my kind of heaven! Picture source

 

Hi everyone! Thank you for being patient while I've been absent. I was a bit peaky, and I've been working hard on writing the backlog of reviews which is my sort of secret book review project. It's not a secret now, and I'm sure I've mentioned it previously. Anyway, I'm 1/3 through the process! 

Holo from the anime Spice and Wolf does a good impression of me when I stay up late reading. I don't use a candle though!

 

1) Write the reviews on my tablet =COMPLETE

2) Post reviews on blog = pending

3) Read & review remaining books

I'm making good progress with this mammoth project which until now has felt neverending. It's great to see the end in sight, and to share so many brilliant novels with you. Gettin them written means I can spend more time creating lovely crochet items and on my own novels-yay! The one still with betas needs major work, but hopefully the current one I'm working on will be in better shape. ^o^ 

Seems appropriate to use Holo again! As much as I'd love to write with a quill and ink,

 

Nayu's News #208 Happy New Year! Blog Changes for 2016

Super cute greeting!

I hope everyone has a fantastic 2016! I'd honestly meant to post this last week, but I had a migraine and have been recovering from it, as well as working hard on my current novel. I'm on the read through before handing to betas stage, so not long to go til I'll have a week off then get editing another wip! 

2016 Blog Changes 

There are only 24 hours in a day...

I hinted last week on Twitter that changes are afoot here. They are changes which some of you won't be surprised about, since you've wondered how I've managed not to enforce them before now. As for the rest of you, well, hopefully you'll understand my reasoning. 

I am not stopping reviewing! 

Thought I'd squish thoughts like that. I love reviewing, I love sharing my thoughts about books with you so I'm not going to stop. 

Book addict for life!

However, book reviewing isn't all I do. At the moment I have the opportunity to focus on writing my own novels full time. Writing takes time. It requires research which involves lots of dvd watching, some chocolate testing a bit of Google use. The harder I work, the most rest I need to let my body recover from all the energy it uses up in playing with my Muse, who is more than a tad demanding.

It takes a long time to rally her into action.

But once she gets going there's no stopping her!

The other week when I had a mini-break I realised that having the time to read a whole book series not for reviewing would be useful for my novel research, but continuing reviewing as much as I have in 2016 isn't too compatible with that. 

So I am going to review less books in 2016. 

Remember, less books doesn't mean no books!

This doesn't involve that much change. I'm hoping to catch up on review posting (& reading) in the week's break once I give my current novel to my beta readers (by 7th Jan, in theory), I'll still review a wide range of genres, just being a bit more selective. Instead of accepting some, I'll add them to my wish list ^o^ 

It initially was a hard decision to make, but once I'd discussed it with a few close friends I knew it was the right one. I have so many different stories to bring to you myself, and I need to focus on them since I'm trying to make it a career, along with my crochet (which is going to have more products soon - will let you know both here on and on my crochet blog Nayu's Crochet Dreams).   

I hope you understand why I'll be reducing how much I review - it's for a very good cause! One day in the not too distant future my own books will be on your shelves ^o^ (& I'll be making headway in , world domination through my own novels!!!)

Here's to a book filled future!

Nayu's News #201 My Muse is in the Mood!

For some reason my Muse frequently acts like Holo in the anime Spice and Wolf: in this case stroppy.

No, my Muse isn't in that kind of mood. She sure can sulk and grumble, but the mood she's in today is more like this: 

Holo again! Looking mega mega happy ^o^

Over the past week in particular Muse is on fire. 

Holo on fire with enthusiasm!

 By working hard on resting more with anime, watching anime music videos, and other stuff I think being more relaxed is having a positive effect on my Muse. She is writing much more. She is more vocal about when she wants to write too. 

While she can pester me to write with words, she only has to look like Holo does here and I'm such a sucker for Muse looking cute. Naturally as I writer I've already lost the plot so yes I can see my Muse!

She's demanded to write as soon as I wake up early, and right before I go to bed. Wherever possible I agree and let Muse play. It's fun! I'm almost half-way through my novel, and I'm aiming to finish this round of edits by the end of the month. It's doable, as now until the end of my wip (work in progress) is more together than the first part which needed complete rewriting. That's not to say it's perfect, far from it. 

I've got a lot of rephrasing to do, and some word finding. I've been finding Dictionary.com and Thesaurus.com extremely useful when I want to check what a word means (sometimes what I think it means isn't what it means) or find a more suitable word to a word I know. 

I Muse figured out what she I was doing wrong. There have been a few parts where I  Muse knew the writing wasn't quite right, but I couldn't figure out precisely what the issue was. I had a yay! moment the other night - I've been headhopping, switching my point of view to the wrong character, which competely changes the dynamic of the story. Issue identified, I'm now able to solve it and that particular paragraph is heaps better - another yay moment! 

Holo in a yay! moment!

I'm loving my current life as part-time author, part-time crochet artist!

Isn't Madoka from Aikatsu cute!!!

Nayu's News #196 Playdate with my Muse!

I'm tired but happy after a productive day. I spent most of it working on a secret crochet project, more news can be found on Nayu's Crochet Dreams blog. I got in some reading 

Both my clothes and reading are is less elaborate than this

and had a wonderful 2 hours playing with Muse!

She gets as happy as Holo in the anime Spice and Wolf when Holo gets to eat apples.

We cut a lot of words out - I've no idea what she was thinking about including some phrases, as they don't make much sense. The delete key isn't red hot though, I added some words too. Eager for tomorrow's playdate! 

Looking forward to tomorrow as much as Akari from Aria the Natural anime looks forward to her training each day (which is a lot)

Gargoylz Mess at the Mill by Burchett and Vogler

June 2011 Red Fox

128 pages, Paperback

Review copy

Children's, 5 years +

Mischievous boys, dawdling, bakery, cake decoration, fun gargoylz, ridiculous villainess, lots of humour

Summary from Random House Children's Books

Max and Ben are sent off to stay with a wrinkly old uncle for the weekend - while their mums think it's a real treat for them, the boys are dreading it, so they're super relieved when their naughty gargoyle friends tag along for the ride.

But things turn out to be much more fun than they thought. Uncle Bill lives right by an old mill where there's lots of fun - and spooky tricks to be played . . .

Nayuleska's reasons for loving Max and Ben...they get up to lots of mischief but they never hurt anyone who doesn't deserve it.

Is there another haracter who deserves a special mention? Naturally there are the gargoylz! They are sweet, caring, very funny and inventive. My favourite is Theo

How evil/nasty is the enemy? Anyone wanting to shut down a highly specialised business to replace it with generic shops needs their head examined.

Are there lots of surprises and plot twists? The gargoylz hilarious stunts left me happily surprised.

What are the illustrations like? Numerous. Looks like pen and ink, definitely increases the humour.

Is the book interactive and/or are the illustrations engaging? I like the free gqrgoylz toy which is sticky so it can stickto surfaces (I haven't tried this, but the boy who I give the books to has enjoyed them). 

My favourite part was...the way Max and Ben tried to procrastinate at the start of the book. .

This Gargoylz adventure gets 10/10 from me.

You can find out more about the gargoylz, including playing a game on their own website.

Suggested reads

Read more Gargoylz books which include my favourite Gargoylz Summer Fun.