Hats, Boots, & Chocolate

      Hello! This week, I present you with four more books from my list of favorites. Enjoy! 1. The Ravenwood Saga,  by Morgan L. Busse     I. Love. These. Books.     It's a rare book that I'll actually reread, let alone one that I reread within a month, and then again within three more. These three books hit that mark, to the point that I bought myself physical copies of them so I wouldn't have to wait for them at the online library anymore. I rate them as high as The Books of Bayern,  they're so good.     Sure, they've got their own little eccentricities. They're not perfect books. But they're pretty incredible, all things considered, and loaded with Christian themes that I, sensitive reader that I am, didn't catch on to until Book 2.     They've also got some really delightful subgenre-switching going on between books. Book 1 is your kind of standard Fantasy Assassin/Rogue story, with a good dose of politics and lots of wonderful internal conflict

     Welcome back, everyone! It's good to see you again!     So, on my "Meet The Author" page I promised a blog post about the cloak shown in the first picture of me. I am here to tell you that today, that promise is going to be fulfilled, because we're thoroughly in winter and it's cold outside, and so I get to wear cloaks almost every day, if I want to!     As a disclaimer, I'm not discussing every kind of cloak, cape, or medieval garment there is. That's not where my interest lies, and I'm a big fan of taking historical clothing and adapting it to suit my fantasy needs, not  trying to document all the historical styles in all the time periods. If you want a more in-depth analysis of a bunch of different kinds of cloaks, visit this video . Further links will be provided as I mention different types of clothing and how they can be used in fantasy.     All right!     My favorite kind of cloak is the ruana cloak, otherwise known as the Irish wrap. It is

    Welcome! Last week I promised you all a hopefully-uplifting rant about modern body-image issues among ladies of my generation and the one before.  If you are going to be offended if I think your demeaning beliefs about yourself are more harmful than they are helpful, then skip this post, okay? I don't want to cause emotional damage; I'm here to try and solve some of it.     Ready?     Here we go.     To be entirely honest, I do not understand why some girls think their bodies are ugly. I personally do not struggle with body-image issues, and I never have, and as a result, I don't understand. Where does this belief come from? What the heck is it doing here?     My hypothesis is that most girls spend far too much time on social media, watching TV, or paying attention to billboards for their own mental and emotional health--a hypothesis supported by a statistic I learned recently in my Lifespan Development class, saying that 30% of teenage girls in the United States have s

     I thought I'd do a post about how I typically go about creating characters. If you are a writer or aspiring writer yourself, maybe you'll find some of the techniques I use helpful--but then, maybe what I do is the exact opposite of what you need to do. As I said in my original writing advice post (located here ), there is no one true way to write. Every person, every author, works differently, because we have different brains, different lives, different experiences and attitudes and personalities. So take what I say with a grain of salt, because it may not work for you.     Also, I'd like to add a caveat that I really enjoy thinking about one specific type of character: the fantasy rogue. I'm trying to break out of my usual pattern of falling back on that archetype, but it isn't easy, and as a result, the case study for this post is partially inspired by the classic fantasy rogue.     There are three major things I consider when I'm creating a character: th