Category: Updates

Trials of Apollo Expectations

5/14/2016

So the Trials of Apollo came out. Yes, I bought it. No, I haven't read it yet (I'm in a reading standstill with Lady Midnight, but I am almost done with it).

In the meantime, I have some honest questions brewing in my mind about how things are going to go down.

(I'm stealing this one from Gazelle) It can't suck. I didn't even get through Magnus Chase because I was so sick of Riordan's formula. This one doesn't follow that so it better not suck.
I need closure on my ships. We ended with a somewhat cliffhanger on Solangelo and I need it to be canon. Like ASAP.
Where's Annabeth? Percy was in the excerpt even though him and Annabeth were supposed to be in New Rome and going to college. He was wearing a high school swim team sweatshirt for a high school he never went to...WHAT HAPPENED? I need me some answers.
What is our main ship? Apollo is a god...on Earth...this ship won't end well. I want to have a ship but the fact that he's going to leave at some point makes me really weary because I don't want my heart broken. I recall something in Blood of Olympus about Reyna falling in love with a god...do I ship? This would be nice closure on Reyna. A lot of people say that she should be single to show that she's independent, but you can still be in a relationship and independent.
I need sass. One of my favorite things about Apollo is his sass, so I need this book chock full of it. No matter what type of situation it is, I expect snarkiness to have a lead role.

Those are my main expectations and questions for Trials of Apollo right now. I know this was a short post, but it was just a fun little tidbit until I read it. Comment below letting me know what your biggest expectation is for Trials of Apollo.

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I'm Writing a Book! (AKA: Why I Haven't Been Reading)

11/9/2015

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Hi guys,

So, if you didn't already know, this month is NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month)! I decided that enough is enough, and I'm going to get my book written and maybe even out into the world someday.

I'm going to try and do my best do write weekly updates about my journey writing this, because the fact that I'm finally writing this (especially about something so close to home) really means a lot to me.

Basically the goal of NaNoWriMo is to write 50,000 words in the month of November (and I started 3 days late, so I'm smart). If you want to keep up with my most updated count, add me as a buddy on the actual website, which I have linked right here.

As of right now, I'm at 9,088 words (while I should be at 15,000, again I started 3 days late and I'm pretty much on par with 3 days ago). Basically what happened was that I made my chapters really short, because I wanted to get to a certain point in the story. When I finally got to that point (which was chapter 10 of 20), I realized that I am even more of a dum dum than usual because I've been really neglecting my chapters and was halfway through the story at 7,000 words. So, I have gone BACK to the beginning of my book and have started adding more description and scenes to lengthen my chapters. I got this suggestion from the wonderful Paige (Enchantology on YouTube), so please go check out her channel, she was super helpful and replied to my distress tweet, so thank you so much Paige! (She's also at 30K and I'm super jealous)

My first three chapters, which were 700, 400 and 300 words respectively are now 1900, 1500 and 1400 now. I'm still going through them and adding a lot more scenes and details to try and make my characters more realistic and help readers better connect with them.

I'm really keeping my plot under wraps, and really just trying to get all the words out before I start talking about it on here. I have very few close friends who have read bits and pieces to give me feedback on, but honestly no one knows too much.

Thankfully, my whole family is being super supportive about this and giving me peace and quiet to write (most of the time). Somehow I am still managing this with school, but we'll see how that continues to go on (also just ponder over the fact that the day I wrote the least was actually a Saturday).

The biggest thing I can say to students specifically doing NaNoWriMo is to keep your phone or a notebook with you at all times, because you never know when you'll have five extra minutes to write. I write between classes, on the bus, if I finish a test early. I even wrote at a party (yes, I wrote 1200 words on my phone in under an hour at a PARTY). Inspiration is going to strike everywhere and you need to keep it all in the same place. Also, having an outline is one of the most helpful things ever, just because you figure out exactly where you want to go, but can leave it broad enough that there are some creative decisions you can make based on what you're feeling at that instance. I did some character mapping for my main character which gave her a lot more personality for me to convey in the text.

Good luck to everyone out there, and don't lose hope! We can all do this!

Caramel

B L O G | I N S T A G R A M | T W I T T E R | E M A I L | G O O D R E A D S | G O O G L E +

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July Wrap-Up and Update for the PJ Challenge

8/1/2015

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Hi guys! I know, it's been really long, I've either been in classes, at rehearsals, in the studio or working pretty much all month long (except for the weekends when I was out of town). This isn't supposed to be a bunch of lame excuses though, I just wanted to make a couple of announcements.

First of all, Gazelle and I have been planning a Percy Jackson marathon for a while now, and although we would love for the last day to be on Percy's birthday, Gazelle has classes that week. So, we're going to be starting on Friday, August 7th. Basically what the Percy Jackson challenge/marathon/thingy/whatever-you-want-to-call-it is where you read each of the books for each day. On Friday you read The Lightning Thief, Saturday read The Sea of Monsters, Sunday read The Titan's Curse and so on until The Blood of Olympus. We're going to try and have a birthday party/pool party for Percy on the last weekend of it to celebrate the end of it. This is great if you haven't read the Percy Jackson books yet, or if you want a refresher before the Magnus Chase books.

• Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children- Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children was our book of the month. I actually started this on audiobook during a road trip and had to finish it on ebook on my phone because I didn't have the patience to finish the audiobook. It's actually going to become a movie soon directed by the one and only Tim Burton! The premise of the book is kind of hard to explain but I'll try my best. There's this kid named Jacob who's 16 and his grandpa is his idol because he told him all these amazing stories about his life when Jacob was very young. After a string of events, Jacob decides to find the children's home where his grandfather grew up to try and figure out if his grandfather's stories were true. There were some aspects of the book I really enjoyed and some I didn't enjoy very much. It took about half of the book before I really had an understanding about what the actual plot was. This is by no means a fast-paced book, but I did hope for a bit more speed in the beginning of the story. I did really like the pictures in the book and how they related to the story, because they added a spooky element that words alone would not achieve. The romance in this book felt very forced and I think I would've appreciated the book without it, especially since it kind of disturbed me. Overall, this was a good first book, (I gave it 4 stars) but I'm hoping for more from the next two, especially since all the world-building has already been done.

• The Retribution of Mara Dyer- The Retribution of Mara Dyer is the final book in the Mara Dyer Trilogy. I really can't say anything without spoiling you, but I am going to be posting a Mara Dyer series review with all of the spoilery goodness. I gave this book 3 stars, mainly because the beginning was really slow, but the book started to pick up speed and I started to pick up interest as I went along with the book. I seriously considered dropping it about 100 pages in, but I forced myself to keep reading and am glad I got the closure I needed for this story.

• Love and Other Unknown Variables- Butter actually recommended Love and Other Unknown Variables when we went to the library together, since we both love math. It's about this senior named Charlie who's extremely smart and his only loves are math and MIT (his dream college). Enter his sister's newfound best friend Charlotte, who happens to be the sister of the English teacher everyone hates. You can guess what happens from there. Some parts of the story seemed pretty generic, but it was a good book, and I really enjoyed all the theorizing about math. Also, IT SPOILS TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD!!! I have yet to read To Kill a Mockingbird, so I just skimmed that part. I gave this book 4 stars, but you don't have to enjoy math to enjoy this book.

• The Queen of Bright and Shiny Things- I actually just picked this book up before realizing that it was already on my TBR shelf on Goodreads. It's about a girl named Sage who had a dark past that no one knows about, but now lives with her aunt and is extremely perky. She meets a guy named Shane who is dark and mysterious, and is immediately attracted to him. Again, a cliched book with a slight twist. Despite a lot of the cliches, the parts that weren't made the book enjoyable. I loved how real the characters felt, but for some reason, Sage just didn't feel real. She said she'd never been in a car, but there were too many points in her life before moving that she had to have been in a car. I gave this 4 stars because it helped pull me out of a reading slump and I read the book in one sitting.

• The Lovely Bones- This book simultaneously broke my heart and scared the bajeezus out of me. It starts with our main character Suzie already in heaven. After she explains how she was raped and murdered, we watch her murderer, family and friends during the next year after her death. This book is by no means a light read. You have to be in a certain mindset to read this. I felt like, at times, there wasn't really much of a point to the story, as we were just watching her family try to carry on, but I think that's part of the message, as young girls get murdered every day. I had my problems with some parts, but the haunting tale of this book kept me reading. Definitely for mature readers with a heart of steel. I wouldn't say I enjoyed this book and I won't be reading it again, but I gave it 3 stars since it had a powerful message, but needed more of a story to keep it flowing.

• I'll Meet You There- 4.5 STARS I'll Meet You There is about a girl named Skylar, who is excited to leave her off-the-highway town of Creek View (where most of the girls her age live in trailers with their one-year-old children) to study art in San Francisco. But just after she graduates, her mother loses her job, and Skylar worries that she'll never get to leave when she was so close to finally doing just that. Josh used to be the grade-A douchebag of Creek View, but that was before he joined the Marines and lost his leg and his best friend in Afghanistan. Now he's back in Creek View, a changed person. As Skylar and Josh become friends at their job, they begin to slowly change each others lives for the better. I really liked Skylar and Josh as well as their boss (whose name I can't remember even though I finished the book an hour ago). I really enjoyed how the book focused more on how they healed each other and very little on the romance. Josh's chapters were very well written, I loved the style because the emotions were very raw with the run on sentences and how he addressed them to his best friend. One of the only real complaints I had was that every time Josh made a homosexual joke, a piece of my heart died, especially since no one ever really called him out on that.

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Update 6/6

6/6/2015

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Hi guys, remember me? I know, I know it's been SO LONG. I wish I had a cool excuse, but honestly, life just got really busy. I didn't want to write small reviews because I want to focus on the quality of my reviews just as much as the quantity. Here's what I've been reading, because I'm trying to get a clean slate. I've been overwhelmed by the number of books I've read and reviews I have to write so I just want to state what I've read and start with reviews after that. Series I've recently finished (TSC) will have series reviews coming. My Paper Towns review is coming along with my updated Stephanie Perkins series review is coming. I'm really hoping to have 1 review a week worked into my schedule over the summer so that its routine by the fall. I also hope to do some book tags over the summer, and Gazelle and I are hoping to do the Percy Jackson challenge over the summer. Butter and I are hoping to do some cosplay and find some other books. Any weeks that I don't have a book read and ready to review I'll maybe review a movie or do a book tag. I'm super excited to get back to regularly posting, so make sure you keep checking the site.

Caramel

BOOKS I'VE READ:

March:

Rebel Belle by Rachael Hawkins: I have a full review of Rebel Belle:http://www.onceuponsomefangirls.weebly.com/caramel/rebel-belle/

Of Poseidon

Dorothy Must Die (DROPPED)

Paper Towns

Clockwork Angel

The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight

Legacy Lost

We Should Hang Out Sometime

City of Fallen Angels

Crushed (REREAD)

City of Ashes

City of Glass

April:

The Selection

Popular

American born Chinese

Since You've Been Gone

Clockwork Prince

The Prince

The Elite

The Guard

The One

Eleanor and Park

City of Lost Souls

Scarlet (dropped)

Just One Year

Clockwork Princess

City of Heavenly Fire

Love and Other Foreign Words (started)

The Queen of the Tearling (dropped)

The Kiss of Deception (started)

We Were Liars

May:

To All the Boys I've Loved Before

This is what Happy Looks Like

A Time to Dance

The Heir

Anna and the French Kiss (reread)

I Was Here (started)

Love and Other Foreign Words

I've been on a slump, but I'm pulling myself out of it!

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Organization

4/9/2015

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Well, I'm working on finishing my wrap up and TBR list but I just want to make a quick clarification. I read, A LOT, and I'm at the point where I'm reading so much that I can't review every single book I read, because it takes a while to really compose my thoughts, write stuff out, edit it, when I'd rather be reading more books. So, I've decided to take a different approach to my organization.

Stand Alone Books: I'm going to try and review as many as possible but I won't be able to do all of them. So, the ones I don't post reviews for, will have a more brief review in my wrap up.

Series: As of right now, I've decided that I'm just going to write series reviews and cover each book a little bit since there is so much depth to them. I can promise that I will do full reviews of series, they'll just take a bit more time.

Re-Reads: There really is no point to reviewing a re-read, so I'll put it on my wrap up, but I won't actually talk about it.

Dropped: I'm going to have a shortened review for dropped books that I post to talk about the plot of the book and why I felt the need to drop it.

So I hope this clears up some confusion and is able to make things a bit easier on my end for me to keep reviewing

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Trials of Apollo Expectations

I'm Writing a Book! (AKA: Why I Haven't Been Reading)

July Wrap-Up and Update for the PJ Challenge

Update 6/6

Organization

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