Hats, Boots, & Chocolate

    In the last eighteen months, I have been on a journey of exploration. Ever since I wrote the first official draft of The Noble Thief  (the novella I'm revising right now, and hope to publish in the next [couple] year[s]) and realized that there wasn't a lot of magic in it, I've been questioning whether I can really call myself a fantasy writer. After all, if your whole magic system is nothing but a volcano that can understand people's intents, that doesn't feel very magical--or very fantasy. In fact, the most fantasy-like part of The Noble Thief  is the plot, which follows the classic fantasy plotline of a runaway/exiled/kidnapped princess who reclaims her throne. Where have we seen that before? Oh, yeah, fairy tales and fairy tale retellings:  The Goose Girl  by Shannon Hale, The Golden Braid  by Melanie Dickerson, The Fairest Beauty  by Melanie Dickerson, etc.     This questioning has raise a lot of insecurities for me--I call myself a fantasy author-in-traini

    Hello, and welcome back to Hats, Boots, & Chocolate! I hope all is going well for y'all right now. :)     Today, I want to talk about speculative fiction, and then I'll discuss how that relates to what I think my genre as a writer is.     The reason this has come up is that, a few days ago, I was chatting with one of my professors before class. You see, that day, I brought a book to school with me to read in the gaps between my classes (if you're interested, the book is Allegiant , which is Book 3 of Veronica Roth's Divergent trilogy. It's an awesome trilogy; I highly recommend it. The movies are pretty good, too, but I was a little disappointed to find that the movies changed a lot of things from the books, and a lot of those changes ultimately simplify the plot, which is kind of sad.). Anyhow, my professor came over and asked, "What age are you reading?"     Once we clarified that she was asking whether I was reading YA or Children's Lit., we

    Welcome back! Sorry it's been so long since I've posted anything; I have been knocked upside down and backwards by school, and only now have I even begun writing stories  again, and that mostly because next week is Fall Break and I have less homework to do than normal.     This post is a Frustrated Writer Support Group post, which is basically my version of an open mic. So, if you have anything writing-related that you need to get off your chest, be it a complaint, a victory, or something else entirely, feel free to drop it in the comments!

    It's time I was completely honest with you. Over the last few months, I have done barely any writing.     I know, I know, it's summer, so I should have way  more time than usual to get my writing done! And I do  have more open time than usual... but I haven't been spending it writing. Instead, I've been watching a lot of YouTube videos, playing a lot of Stardew Valley, and working. Sometimes I get up and get useful things done at home, like washing dishes or cleaning bathrooms or folding laundry or practicing my step vault for the parkour program I've started (oh, yeah, I'm doing parkour now. It's great; I'll post videos of some of the moves I've learned sometime!). But all in all, it's been a pretty lazy summer.     And now, oops, summer is nearly over. I start my next semester of classes the week after tomorrow, and between a full-time college schedule and work, I basically have one and three-quarters open days per week (that aren't Sun

    Okay, welcome back to my blog post duology about storytelling mediums! Let's jump right in, shall we?     The first of the more uncommon mediums I've seen is video games.     No, I'm not talking about the video game itself, though developers can and certainly do tell plenty of stories through this medium. (I'd put this in its own category, as with stage plays and performance art, but I don't play enough story-based video games to have a recommendation so I'll leave it to someone else to talk about the advantages video games have over other mediums.) Rather, I'm talking about people who tell stories through the gameplay.     Take, for example, the Empires SMP. This is, actually, my favorite example of this medium, so here's the recommendation right now, but Empires  is basically a TV series, created by 12-15 different YouTube creators at once , that uses Minecraft to tell its integral story. Each creator roleplays as a different character with a diffe

    There are many methods and mediums to tell a story, and each has its pros and cons. There's a lot of discussion on the Internet about Comics Vs. Prose, Books Vs. Television, or Movies Vs. TV Series. I'm not going to get into all that today.     Instead, today's post is meant to be an exploration of different ways to tell story, from books to visual media of all kinds. Since the post quickly became too long, I'm going to start with a summary of the more common storytelling mediums, and then I'll write a second one about some of the more unusual methods I've seen.     My favorite way to consume story is via books. If they're well-written, clean in their content, and original in their concept, I'll read them, enjoy them, and read them again. Remove one of those elements and it's a one-off book--one I'll read once and call it good.     To subdivide books into two broad categories of mediums, we have prose books (including non-fiction, fantasy for