I read: Wolf's Bane

Wolf's Bane by Kelley Armstrong

So excited to have this to read.  It's the first in a duology, focussed on the next generation of the Otherworld series.

The Otherworld series may be my absolute favourite books, so this was going to be a slam dunk for me. I love Kelley Armstrong's writing, but especially in that series.

I read: Life Is Short and Then You Die

Mystery Writers of America Presents Life Is Short and Then You Die: First Encounters with Murder -  edited by Kelley Armstrong with stories by Kelley Armstrong, R.L. Stine, Y.S. Lee, Melissa Marr, Amanda Witt, Rachel Vincent, Jeff Somers, Eileen Rendahl, David Bart, Jeff Soloway, Julie Tollefson, Joseph S. Walker, Anthony Franze and Barry Lancet, Emmy Laybourne, Jonathan Mayberry, Stephen Ross, Caleb Roehring, and Barry Lyga.


Obviously, I picked this one up because of the Kelley Armstrong connection. I will read anything that she writes because she has been so consistent. Because I trust her writing, I also trust that she wouldn't be involved in anything that doesn't live up to her standard, so I never shy away from reading anthologies that she's involved with. I do, in fact, read everything included in the anthology. And this one is no different.

I read: The Isis Trilogy

The Isis Trilogy by Monica Hughes 

(includes Keeper of the Isis Light, The Guardian of Isis and The
Isis Pedlar)

I read these books when I was in grade 7 or 8.  I recall finding them immensely interesting because I think they were the first things I read that were in the sci-fi genre.  Set in the future, but about humans as if they're now, these are an interesting study of people.

I write: Dialogue

In Week 5 we talked about dialogue and beats, with a quick review of narrative summary and theme. Our in-class exercise was to write some dialogue, based around the idea of True Confessions.  Initially we were to right just the dialogue, with simple tags, and we were instructed to write beats that fit in afterwards.   I don't follow direction well - when I write dialogue, the beats go right along with it.  So while everyone else was writing their beats, I just wrote some additional dialogue, and little internal monologue.

Here's what I wrote:

I read: The End and Other Beginnings

The End and Other Beginnings: Stories from the Future by Veronica Roth

This was a lovely collection of short stories or novellas.  The six stories were a collection of different characters, some of whom we'd met before in other of Roth's work and some new. 

I felt comfortable in these stories, not because I recognized some of the characters but because the writing was familiar and easy to follow.

I write: Internal Monologue

Second exercise in Week 4 of class was Interior monologue - which I call internal monologue.  (Interior makes me think the person was speaking to themselves inside.)

Direction was to write a paragraph or so of internal monologue, inside the head of the main character, whatever seems appropriate for your protagonist to say.

And here's what I wrote:

I write: Narrative Summary

Week 4 of the writing class - still working with the same character, we're talking about narrative summary.  In class, we wrote a narrative summary of no more than one or two paragraphs.  Where the character is, what they're doing, in first or third person POV.

This is what I wrote: