Month: September 2018

The State of the Reader: 9/26/18

/ The Shameful Narcissist / 5 Comments

<–The State of the Reader: 9/12/18          The State of the Reader: 10/10/18–>

A weekly post updated every other Wednesday detailing my current reading projects and what new titles I’ve added to my to-read list.  Title links go to Goodreads, and if you have an account there feel free to friend me!  I’d love to see what you’re reading and/or planning to read.

Books Purchased: 3

Books Finished: 2

Title: The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August
Author: Claire North
Date Added: September 15, 2017
Date Started: August 23, 2018
Date Finished: September 21, 2018
Reading Duration: 29 days

The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August cover

Media: eBook/Kindle

This is in the running for best/favorite book of the year, and I’ve added another one of the author’s novels to my ever growing list.

Continue reading →

The State of the Writer: 9/23/18

/ The Shameful Narcissist / 9 Comments

<–The State of the Writer: 9/9/18          The State of the Writer: 10/7/18–>

A biweekly post updated every Sunday discussing my current writing projects and any completed the prior two weeks.

Finished Projects: 5

I wasn’t sure whether or not I should count finishing and posting a chapter of The Broken Rose as a project, since the story itself is one, but I guess I could consider it a finished part of a huge project so I’ll allow it.

Project: Story
Title: The Broken Rose
Genre: Paranormal Romance
Type: Fanfiction (FFVII) Novel
Current Word Count: 257,319
Prior Word Count: 258,319
Word Difference: -1000
Status: Editing
Progress: First edit of Chapter 12

It’s been over a year, but I’m finally back to editing and posting chapters.  I still need to update the story on Deviant Art, and I’ve decided I’m just going to directly post from here onto tumblr.  DevArt is already a pain in the ass to post to, and since I can take that shortcut with the little t I’m going to do it.

Aeris has a big choice to make in this chapter, which is currently entitled “Ways and Means.”  I’m 90% good with that title since it fits with the happenings, but doesn’t give anything away.  There’s a lot of extraneous stuff in this chapter, so the delete button has been my friend.  I like how it tightens up the narrative.

I haven’t done a snippet in a while, but a comment I received this week made me think this one would be appropriate.

Continue reading →

The State of the Gamer: 9/18/18

/ The Shameful Narcissist / 6 Comments

<–The State of the Gamer: 9/4/18            The State of the Gamer: 10/2/18–>

A weekly post updated every other Tuesday detailing my current gaming projects.  I have an account at Grouvee, which is a site you can use to keep track of your backlog, so please feel free to friend me there!

What I Played

Title: Octopath Traveler
System: Nintendo Switch

Octopath Traveler coverDate Started: August 11, 2018

I have all of the secondary jobs now and am currently working on everyone’s third chapter.  I’d love to hear how other players prefer to dole them out.  I had Olberic as a Hunter, but honestly, I don’t think it added much to his repertoire.  I like him as an Apothecary better, because it gives him use of the axe and that Amputate spell, which is boss.  Plus he can use some ice magic.  I like Ophilia as either a Dancer or Scholar since that gives her more magic to use, though I’d rather keep someone else as a Scholar to spread it around.   Tressa is definitely a Thief because holy shit is Collecting more fantastic.  I think I grabbed 20,000 leaves (what a weird currency lol) from the python and snake charmer near Wellspring, and that’s each.  I like Primrose as a Scholar because I can have her Analyze.  She’s more of a support character at the moment, which isn’t a slight on her at all.

Continue reading →

Witch Hunt on Crystal Lake by B. Batiste (Moon Investigations Book 1)

/ The Shameful Narcissist / 4 Comments

Moon Investigations

Restless Bones on Crystal Lake–>

Title: Witch Hunt on Crystal Lake
Series Title: Moon Investigations
Author: B. Batiste
Date Started: December 23, 2017
Date Finished: January 6, 2018
Reading Duration: 14 days
Genre: Fantasy, Supernatural, Mystery

Witch Hunt on Crystal Lake coverPages: 215
Publication Date: January 1, 2018
Publisher: Self
Media: Kindle

If you are a magical or mythical creature in your human form or other and need help the police can’t or won’t provide, come on down to Moon Investigations. Where help may be only a spell away. 

On the island of Crystal Lake where technology and magic are intertwined, magical gangs will rob and or curse you and dragons strut their stuff down the street, anything can happen. 

Private Investigator Hazel Moondance tries her best to help those in need. Family members of the missing, forgotten and runaways are her main clients. So, when a mother comes to her looking for her daughter Rose Stone, Hazel is determined to find her. With the help of a bounty hunter and a seasoned witch, Hazel must sort through the life and secrets of Rose. She finds a secret that leads to other unsolved cases and a ritual that could destroy the island. 

Now Hazel and her helpers must find Rose, the other missing girls and the person who took them before the night of the Emerald Stars or it will be too late.

This is an excellent witchy mystery that doesn’t rely on cliched tropes.  Of course there’s magic and mythical creatures, but it reads more like a “whodunnit?” with a variety of magical characters.

Continue reading →

The Prophet of Yonwood by Jeanne DuPrau (Book of Ember #3) (DNF)

/ The Shameful Narcissist / 3 Comments

<–The People of Sparks (BOE #2)                              The Diamond of Darkhold (BOE #4)–>

Title: The Prophet of Yonwood
Series Title: Book of Ember
Author: Jeanne DuPrau
Date Added: September 17, 2017
Date Started: December 23, 2017
Date DNF: December 27, 2017
Reading Duration: 4 days
Genre: Mid-grade/Young Adult (YA), Science Fiction, Speculative Fiction, Post-Apocalyptic, Dystopian

The Prophet of Yonwood cover

Pages: 289
Publication Date: April 1, 2006
Publisher: Yearling Edition
Media: Paperback

Nickie will grow up to be one of the first citizens of the city of Ember. But for now, she’s an eleven-year-old girl whose father was sent away on some mysterious government project.

So when the opportunity to move presents itself, Nickie seizes it. But her new town of Yonwood, North Carolina, isn’t what she’d anticipated. It’s a place full of suspicion and mistrust, where one person’s visions of fire and destruction have turned the town’s citizens against each other. Nickie explores the oddities around her–her great-grandfather’s peculiar journals, a reclusive neighbor who studies the heavens, a strange boy who is fascinated with snakes–all while keeping an eye out for ways to help the world. Or is it already too late to avoid a devastating war?

There seems to be some disagreement with whether or not this is the 3rd or 4th book.  Goodreads has it marked as the 3rd, but in my set The Diamond of Darkhold is the third installment and Yonwood doesn’t even have a number.  I can kind of understanding putting the prequel in the midst of the series to have readers reflect on how the world arrived at this point while the resolution to the narrative is still up in the air, but I see better advantages of reflecting when the original story is full told.

Regardless, The Prophet of Yonwood wasn’t nearly as engaging as the other books.  This is disappointing since the lead up to what caused the conditions prompting Ember’s construction could’ve been a gripping tale.  While I didn’t finish it, it seems like the author’s focus was on prophesy and proselytizing instead.

Continue reading →

The Broken Rose – Update

/ The Shameful Narcissist / 4 Comments

At the very least I can claim this accomplishment for my vacation: I finished my revisions for The Broken Rose and just completed re-posting them here.  WordPress doesn’t change the date of the original post, which is the reason for this update with convenient link in tow.

I do have Chapter 11 finished and with any luck I’ll have that posted before the week is out.  I also need to do the re-posting for my other sites, but that’s also a task for another day.

Thanks as always for your continued interest in this fanfic that turned out to be much more involved than I ever though it would be!

The State of the Reader: 9/12/18

/ The Shameful Narcissist / 14 Comments

<–The State of the Reader: 8/29/18          The State of the Reader: 9/26/18–>

A weekly post updated every other Wednesday detailing my current reading projects and what new titles I’ve added to my to-read list.  Title links go to Goodreads, and if you have an account there feel free to friend me!  I’d love to see what you’re reading and/or planning to read.

Books Purchased: 4

Books DNF: 1

Title: The Riddle of the Wren
Author: Charles de Lint
Date Added: August 24, 2014
Date Started: August 26, 2018
Date DNF: September 5, 2018
Reading Duration: 10 days

The Riddle of the Wren coverMedia: Physical (Library)

This is one of those books I would’ve devoured in high school.  It’s an old school fantasy (published in 1984) by one of my favorite authors back then.  This was actually his first published work…and it shows.  It’s not bad, but you can see where the cracks haven’t been smoothed over.  When I’m less concerned  with how a story gets to where it’s going and more about how the characters resolve it, I know it’s not something I’ll enjoy reading, and I’ll usually just flip to the end to see how it all plays out.  I didn’t bother doing that with this one.

Continue reading →

The Sunshine Blogger Award #4

/ The Shameful Narcissist / 9 Comments

I…have been selected again for a Sunshine Blogger Award; this time courtesy of Extra Life Reviews who has solid opinions and the chops to back them up.  You should check him out!

The Sunshine Blogger Award ChallengeI might have let this one go by the wayside if I wasn’t so intrigued by the questions.  So without further ado, let’s get to it!

Have you ever watched a critically acclaimed show only to feel it didn’t live up to the hype?

I tried watching The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, and I just couldn’t get into it. It’s possible I’ll like it upon a second viewing since that’s what occurred with me and Arrested Development.  There’s also The Office (American version), but I attempted that years ago, and I was a different person then.

After truly getting into the medium and observing the many times film critics failed to see eye-to-eye with fans, I’ve come down to the conclusion that the former faction could stand to improve themselves. How do you think they should go about doing that?

Continue reading →

The State of the Writer: 9/9/18

/ The Shameful Narcissist / 4 Comments

<–The State of the Writer: 8/26/18          The State of the Writer: 9/23/18–>

A biweekly post updated every Sunday discussing my current writing projects and any completed the prior two weeks.

Finished Projects: 2

Project: Story
Title: The Broken Rose
Genre: Paranormal Romance
Type: Fanfiction (FFVII) Novel
Current Word Count: 258,319
Prior Word Count: 259,639
Word Difference: -1320
Status: Preparing to (Re)Post
Progress: Early chapter review complete

Extremely realistic painting of a white rose with pinkish interior with the artist standing in the right cornerI don’t even remember when the hell I decided to go back and do this revision, but I think it’s finally done.  I completed a third edit of Chapter 11 yesterday, and while I think it would benefit from a fourth, there’s no reason I can’t start reposting the beginning chapters at this time.  This week’s plan is to figure out the best way to do that, since it has to be done on multiple platforms.

Continue reading →

Strange the Dreamer by Laini Taylor (Strange the Dreamer #1)

/ The Shameful Narcissist / 8 Comments

Title: Strange the Dreamer
Series Title: Strange the Dreamer
Author: Laini Taylor
Date Added: April 18, 2016
Date Started: August 26, 2017
Date Finished: December 20, 2017
Reading Duration: 116 days
Genre: Fantasy, Romance, Young Adult (YA)

Strange the Dreamer coverPages: 528
Publication Date: May 28, 2017
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Media: Hardback

The dream chooses the dreamer, not the other way around—and Lazlo Strange, war orphan and junior librarian, has always feared that his dream chose poorly. Since he was five years old he’s been obsessed with the mythic lost city of Weep, but it would take someone bolder than he to cross half the world in search of it. Then a stunning opportunity presents itself, in the person of a hero called the Godslayer and a band of legendary warriors, and he has to seize his chance or lose his dream forever.

What happened in Weep two hundred years ago to cut it off from the rest of the world? What exactly did the Godslayer slay that went by the name of god? And what is the mysterious problem he now seeks help in solving?

The answers await in Weep, but so do more mysteries—including the blue-skinned goddess who appears in Lazlo’s dreams. How did he dream her before he knew she existed? And if all the gods are dead, why does she seem so real?

When we become waterlogged, and the cage disintegrates, we will intermingle.  When this paper aeroplane leaves the cliff edge, and carves parallel vapour trails in the dark, we will come together.

-Dear Esther

The dream is strange and strange is the dreamer.  Lazlo, the only other name he has.  A war orphan raised by monks, he very early on falls in love with story even as he’s near broken by abuse, and the one tale he can never forget is of the forgotten city of Weep.  Lazlo’s passion for this lost land is equivalent to mine for Final Fantasy VII, which no one can ever quite share.

Continue reading →