Brandon Sanderson

I finally, FINALLY got to go to a Brandon Sanderson book signing. For a resident of American Fork, he’s not home very much.

I heard about it thanks to Chris, who discovered Sanderson before me. I went to the signing on the 21st. There had been one on Saturday the 18th in Sugar House, but I was too busy with cookies and a headache that day to try and go. This one was in Orem.

After pondering the best use of time, I ended up driving to Orem Thursday morning to get the wristbands from Barnes and Noble that reserved your place in line. So I drove over 45 minutes for a 30-second visit to the store and then back again. Glenn and Jaelyn and I all returned to the store in the evening. We left around 4:30 to allow time for rush hour but took Mountain View most of the way. 

It took about an hour to get there and then some time to find the right strip mall and parking. We had wristbands 84, 85, and 86. We were in line about 45 minutes; I just read while waiting. We had our seven books signed and had our picture taken. (I’m fantasizing about enlarging and framing it.) We told Brandon that we met in the class he now teaches. I was completely thrilled, and it took all my restraint to not just yell and scream like a teenager. 

Glenn and I had seen Brandon at Comic Con, but Jaelyn had never seen him before. Then we had to brave the crazy Utah Valley drivers on our way home. We were home before it got late, even if it was the darkest day of the year.

PMS Christmas

I had major PMS the entire week before Christmas, making it unwise for me to be around people. It was not a good time to write Christmas cards or shop for presents or anything. I had to minimize the number of cards I sent out because the whole time I was thinking, “Here’s your damn Christmas card! Now go away and be happy.”

Wednesday afternoon I got all ready to do laundry and wrapping presents while watching TV—my favorite way to do chores—when the remote vanished into thin air. Poof, literally. You cannot turn on the TV without the remote. Stupid design. Because of PMS, I was enraged and frustrated and had to go outside for a while to yell and kick things. 

It was gone for THREE DAYS. Instead of watching TV, I ended up listening to my audiobook (The Night Circus) for the next couple days instead of watching TV. It wasn’t as satisfying as TV would have been. The book was kind of boring, and I was anxious to just finish it. 

The remote showed up Friday in a box of fruit snacks. I didn’t see it until the fruit snacks were mostly gone. As soon I have a chance, I’m getting one of those key and remote locator devices.

Donuts for Dinner

December 5 we went to Tanya Masina’s Grinch-themed Christmas party at Wheeler Farm. Tanya is our real estate agent. (It got me out of the Relief Society dinner.) I had thought it was a dinner, but it wasn’t, and there wasn’t time to make something before going. 

The party had a live band and decorations, and the Grinch came and took presents away. Then the kids all had to sing to get him to return them. We had donuts and hot chocolate and then popcorn at home. It was the first time the kids didn’t complain about dinner in a long time.

Winning Books

I won the library’s Reader’s Choice drawing. Finally! After ten years of reading and voting. I won a $25 gift card to Barnes and Noble. I was so elated and giddy over it.

In case you don’t know, twice a year the county library nominates 20-25 books for their Reader’s Choice program. You read them and rate them. Each ballot increases your odds of winning the drawing at the end. Sometimes I read a lot of nominees and sometimes not many. I try to at least read all the fantasy nominations.

Once at the bookstore It was so hard deciding which books to get; I wanted them all. For a few maniacal minutes, I was going to get a whole bunch. In the end I got The Hollow Boy (Jonathan Stroud), The Creeping Shadow (Jonathan Stroud), and The Dark Talent (Brandon Sanderson). I was in the middle of reading The Creeping Shadow, so I returned the library’s copy and read mine instead. I usually read books before buying them to ensure that I really want them.

Scouting Rant

December 1, cub scout day camp registration opened. It used to open in February, but they moved it back, which screws up everybody’s annual budget accounting. This year the required down payment went from $10 per kid to $20.

Scouting has several websites. You’re never sure which one you want, and chances are good that your previous username and password no longer works. It’s easier to get to the right page through Google than trying to navigate their web pages’ menus.

First the website demanded I update Flash. Flash was updated, but the website didn’t believe it, so I had to use prostitute myself and use Internet Explorer instead of Chrome. Now, you have to click things in exactly the right order to get it to work. Do I choose the event first, or do I select my pack first? 

For the wolf/bear camp, I had to register each boy with their name and address and birthday and DNA sequence and then add them to the “cart.” Then, every time I added a boy, I got an error message. This was actually a lie, but I had to click it twice for it to go through.  

But the Webelos camp registration was completely different, even though it was the same site and the same event. For that, I just picked how many boys I wanted to register. To actually register them required payment in full. After some minor yelling and major sarcasm, I finally got it figured out. We’ll know for sure when it’s time to finish paying.

Corin's Baptism

 Saturday, December 2, was Corin’s baptism. I hadn’t even realized how quickly it was coming up. Jordynn M. was baptized at the same time, and her parents took her out and took pictures and made a nice baptism announcement and everything. Me, I was like, “Wait, that’s this Saturday?”

There were several other kids getting baptized, including a kid from Corin’s school class. He was excited about that. Being the 10th Ward, we went last as usual. Neither of our parents could make it, but siblings Mike and Angela and Chris came. Ivy wasn’t feeling well, so Elicia stayed home with her. That was too bad because Ivy is Jordynn’s second cousin. Aunt Maggie and cousin Kevin came but they were a little late so we didn’t see them until the end. Glenn’s co-worker Debbie Riddle came with her granddaughter to be supportive as non-members, which was really nice.

Corin didn’t get use the baptism jumper that Grandma Hammer has. All her kids and most of the grandkids were baptized in it. But I don’t think Corin cared.

I was afraid Corin would completely rebel against being in the water. He found it a bit cold and was hesitant about getting in. After the baptism, he shook his head and rubbed his eyes with a “brrrbb.” I just knew he would do that. Isn’t it interesting how you can know your child so well that you know exactly what they’ll do?

Mike, Angela, Chris, Maggie, and Kevin came to our house after. We had a light nacho lunch and visited for a while. That was a really big turnout for one of our family events.

NaNoWriMo 2017

 
In case you didn’t know, November is National Novel Writing Month. Participants’ goal is to write a novel during the month of about 50,000 words with no editing or revising. This was the first time I tried it. I joined several writing buddies from Goodreads.

My novel was more of an experiment. I took my first novel and rewrote it from a different character’s point of view. About half-way through the month (around 25,000 words), I ran out of plot and just kind of filled in scenes for the rest of the month. But I was kind of bored with the story and left November re-invigorated to finish my third novel, which is nearly done and much better.

Our monthly League of Utah Writers meeting was spent at a member’s home doing writing sprints. Jaelyn came with Glenn and me. She shares her writing with friends but not with us. I guess I can understand that. I won two out of three, mostly because I can type fast. I won some chocolate and pens and pencils and stuff like that.

November Reads

Pitch Green (Dimensions in Death #1) by the Brothers Washburn

What a great, fun creepy book! It’s very clean, being YA, but still plenty scary. There’s a monster and a creepy mansion connected to it. Camm and Cal are great characters—not stupid or annoying—and they complement each other well. The writing is smooth and feels experienced. Just be warned that children and dogs are NOT safe in this book.

***

Economy of Fear (The Page Turners #2) by Kevin T. Johns

This is better than the first book. It has a lot of suspense and tension and solid descriptions. In the first book, a group of three unpopular boys unleash a spell that starts making fiction books come true. They fought off a bad vampire. Now, they find that the vampire menace isn’t quite over. The boys’ friendship fractures, and they split off into different ventures. One stays behind to fight vampires. One goes off to learn more about magic. And one is abducted by aliens, which was pretty creepy. There are a few spelling and grammar errors. The most egregious one is the spelling “alright.” (shudder)

***

Summer Knight (The Dresden Files #4) by Jim Butcher

Today, we are featuring fairies!



In Dresden’s world, “fairies” includes a lot of creatures. Okay, this book is pretty good. We get into more of Harry’s past, which was fascinating. Add in a perplexing murder mystery, a bunch of monsters, some good chuckles, and some major showdowns, and you have a rather satisfying urban fantasy adventure. I especially love his battle cry: “I don’t believe in fairies!”

*** 

The Vampire and the Paramedic (Extreme Medical Services 0.5) by Jamie Davis

This is a prequel, and I haven’t read any of the main series yet, but I wasn’t lost or anything. In this little story, a vampire becomes smitten with a paramedic after she helps him and his werewolf friend after a car wreck. The story is his courtship of her. He works to understand her and be honest about himself with her. There’s no real major conflict; just a cute little story about a realistic relationship. There are some issues with editing (spelling, punctuation, etc.)

***

Just One Damned Thing After Another (The Chronicles of St Mary’s, #1) 

I was expecting something steampunk because of the cover, but it’s actually a slightly odd collection of time travel mishaps. There is a character roster at the beginning, which is helps a lot, but I still got lost with all the characters. Most didn’t have distinct personalities. The ones that did acted out of character at times. There’s a pretty high body count in the book, anyway.

The quirkiness of the story is endearing. The adventures were interesting. I got a bit confused a couple of times and felt like some things went over my head. I’m going to attribute this to middle-aged senility and adult ADD. All in all, it’s a series worth continuing.

The only real editing problem was with the quotation marks. They were frequently missing, sometimes showed up where they weren’t wanted, and sometimes faced the wrong way. It got annoying pretty quickly.

***

The Abolition of Man by C.S. Lewis

This is a collection of three related, non-religious essays. Lewis observed the introduction of Progressive ideals (like moral relativism) in schools and explained the logical problems with them. He examines the ideas (there is no absolute truth, no intrinsic value, and no Natural Law) and shows the flaws in their logic.

The way he tackles these philosophical ideas just proves his genius. Just watching his thought process and the beautiful writing is fascinating.

***

How to Lie With Statistics by Darrell Huff

I didn’t realize at first that this book was written in 1954. It’s still relevant today; math and people don’t change. It’s written in a fun, conversational style with lots of concrete examples that make the topics easy to understand. Even if you’ve already studied statistics, it’s a good refresher to see how they’re used in everyday media.

***

Midnight Is a Place by Joan Aiken

Aiken is a unique writer; it’s generally alternative action historical fiction. Some stories have some paranormal elements in them. I’ve decided to label her books “historical fantasy.” I made up that genre name, but I like it.

This one is a stand-alone novel. It takes place in the town of Blastburn (with Yorkshire-ish accents), a setting in The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, but this is the only connection to that book or series. The review quoted on the back of the book gives away a lot of the plot, so don’t read that. 

The writing is very good; the details shine with creativity. Part 1 and Part 2 of the book are quite different. In Part 3, we see all those threads tie together, and that was great fun.

***

The First Four Years (Little House #9) by Laura Ingalls Wilder

This short book is actually a draft that was discovered posthumously. I expect the plan was to go back and flesh it out. As it stands, it’s a bare-bones account of the most prominent memories of the beginning of the Wilders’ marriage. I still have only read the first five Little House books, and that was years and years ago, so I don’t remember the style of those books very well. I expect this one will be quite different in contrast.

I heard a long time ago that Laura hated dwelling on negative events, and that’s why Mary’s going blind is glossed over and the birth and death of their baby brother is excluded. In this account, it’s just one hardship after another. Laura states what happened but doesn’t dwell on it.

Imagine you’re a newlywed farmer on the frontier. What could go wrong? Whatever you can think of, it happened to these folks. Seriously, we have no right to complain about our lives ever. These pioneers would look at us with contempt because any one of them could kick our butts.

I found the whole account gripping; it was vivid and stark at the same time. It really brought that time and place to life.

*** 

Skies (Sharani #3) by Kevin L. Nielsen

The story is pretty interesting: Our knowledge of the world is greatly expanded, along with the history, religion, and culture that have been influenced by magic. Lhaurel leaves with the other Sisters when they promise to not destroy her people. They expect her to become one of them. Gavin leads the remnant of the Rahuli and hopes to get his people and the leftover slaves of the Orinai to become united as one people for their mutual defense (because the Sisters are not keeping their promise).

There’s a lot of buildup, so I see the possibility of a sequel series.

The writing is fine but not exceptional. There are quite a few editing errors, several per page. There are grammar and tense errors, usage errors, homophone errors, punctuation errors, missing words, extra words, transposed letters, and random letters missing or inserted, plus the persistent spelling alright. It gets pretty distracting. This is just a sample from a single reading session:

Several people sat inside, staring over that the barge with awe.

A window opened forty feet above them and woman looked out.

She had a hard, square face and figure was blocky ...

One who’s presence is a constant reminder of their desperation ...

“Why would you betray us to being with?”
He seemed to try and be deciding if he’d made a mistake.

***

Darkly Bound by Nikki Trionfo

This short story is written in the fashion of an old-fashioned fairy tale. The writing is smooth and flowing. The story is solid and engaging. (I met Nikki a few months ago at a Utah Horror Writers chapter meeting.)