Tuesday, June 30, 2015

Speed Reading - What a Novel Idea! (June Book Wrap-Up)

Despite it being Sonic's birthday month, June felt rather slow for me. I'm not entirely sure why; I certainly had plenty to do between work, school, reading, writing, baseball, and the like. Maybe it's because I've been so excited for July's session of Camp NaNoWriMo. Perhaps it's due to my struggles in writing this month. Whatever the reason, June was kind of slow for me, despite getting a lot done.

Writing
My goal for June was to finish writing my first full-length TMNT fanfiction, "Dude, This is No Vacation," which I did. (Finished WRITING it, not typing/sharing. The rest of the chapters will be posted weekly until the end of July.) The story in its entirety is 25 chapters long, with a prologue and epilogue. I have actually really struggled to write this book. It's my first full-length TMNT fanfic, as I mentioned above. I've based it off the 2007 movie, which is hard to recreate since it was a stand-alone story. It follows a Sonic fanfiction trilogy that I worked on for years and loved writing. And - here's the kicker - the more I write TMNT, the more I dislike the story I've created. OK, that's not exactly true. I like the idea of where the story is going to take me. It was just this first book that gave me trouble. I had to set up the world, work through some unfun issues with my protagonist, and build up to the more exciting stuff that will happen in Book Two. I have to admit, the last few chapters were my favorites and way easier to write because I was able to really get things going with the plot and with the characters. (No spoilers!)

Anyway, long story short, I finished my first TMNT fanfic and will spend Camp NaNo beginning to write Book Two. (I'm not revealing the title and cover yet - sorry!) My current stats for "Dude, This is No Vacation" are as follows: 3,788 reads; 298 votes; and 82 comments.

I don't even want to talk about my writing beyond fanfiction.

Reading
I read eight books this month! EIGHT! I believe that's a new personal best. I had a lot of time to kill at work this month (since no one comes in during the summer and I worked a 40-hour week to cover for my boss). Plus, CrushYourTBR was hosting a 24-hour readathon, which I totally knocked out of the park. These are the books I read this month:


A Work in Progress was a book I'd wanted to get my hands on ever since it was announced. It was an amazing, inspiring read. It's incredible how much one can take away from a single chapter in the memoir, let alone the whole thing. I highly recommend this book. Project Cain was disappointing. The reviews for it called it a "killer of a thriller," and while it was about killers, I felt absolutely no thrill in reading it. There was no suspense or mystery. The author's voice was extremely apathetic. There was no dialogue. I'm not kidding. NONE. I felt very let down after finishing this novel. The Last Best Kiss and Of Beast and Beauty were both amazing love stories. I can especially relate to the protagonist in the first one.

In addition to the real books I read, I also decided to crush my Sonic Graphic Novel TBR (in honor of Sonic's birthday month), which consisted of:

I was glad to finally get through these novels and learn more about the world of Mobius pre-SGW. I had already read Evil Reborn in the comic series as it was being released, but it was neat to have it all in one place. Mogul Rising explained a lot of things I hadn't known about a major villain in the series, and each of the Sonic Selects explained bits and pieces of minor characters as well as providing entertainment with funny snippets from full-length stories.

Well...that's it for June! Sonic and Shadow's birthday month has come and gone, and with it, the June Sonic Special. I hope you enjoyed reading about the Blue Blur this month as much as I enjoyed writing about him. See you in July for more nerdy posts! And as always, celebrating 24 years of Sonic the Hedgehog, I'm up, over, and GONE!!

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