Audely Bensen Writes

I read A House with Good Bones by T. Kingfisher and loved it. This is the second horror in a row. I picked this up from the library because a friend from work raved about this author, and I was not disappointed.  I loved the voice of this book, and the tiny details that built up a beige culdesac life. I read this whole book in one sitting with my heart hammering in my throat. It was perfectly creepy and I think I might actually like reading horror now.  The only thing that I would have changed in this book was that at one point Sam wonders where she got her love of bugs from, and then at the end wonders how her grandfather created the "underground children," which are described to be fairly bug-like.  Actually, maybe we were all better off not following that thread through...

I picked up Sister, Maiden, Monster by Lucy A. Snyder from the library last week because the cover looked awesome and I only had 5 minutes to browse for the week. I'm not normally a horror reader, so this was an odd choice for me.  Despite that, I really enjoyed the book. The use of epigraphs brought an additional level of interest and introspection into the narrative. And during a hectic week at work, it was oddly comforting to read a book where people repeatedly let themselves be buffeted around by the universe and just rolling with the increasingly odd punches.  If someone asked me to describe this book I don't think I would be able to. Part pandemic book, part everything else. Would recommend. 

The World We Make by N.K Jemisin is the sequel to The City We Become . It follows the City of New York and his six boroughs as they face a corrupt politician supported by The Enemy, an inter-spatial construct of eldritch horror that explained way too much about certain political events of the past few years.  Even as it tackled very serious subjects and realities, this book was the most fun I've had reading in a while. There were so many pop culture jokes that even I managed to pick up some--there was even a reference to Jade City ! I loved the characters and being able to follow them for another book. For some reason, the thing that I loved the most about this book were the chapter titles, which normally I don't pay much attention to.  I wish I could say something pithy and clever about this book. Instead all I'll say is that I'm glad this exists. 

Seattle, from Elliot Bay Trail.  April:  Drafted first 1/4 of Dandelions V3.0. Attended another craft book club with the writing group, this time reading "Story Genius." While I've read it before (while drafting V1.0 of Dandelions, actually), this time something clicked. AND I made a friend! Then I got the non-COVID non-Flu cold from hell, which knocked me out for about 3 weeks.  May: Had an existential crisis over whether Dandelions had a plot. Caved and bought Plottr, and spent 2 weeks re-plotting using a combination of Story Genius and Plottr. Fell in love with Plottr (seriously--I created an adapted Story Genius-inspired template for each scene outline, and then exported the whole thing to scrivener. Then I shifted my half-draft into the new template and everything is so clean and organized!). In the second half of May I revised the first half of Dandelions to fit the new outline.  June : Drafted the second half of Dandelions. Beta read 3 fulls, totaling 254,000...