Rested & Ready to Rock!

Have you ever reached one of those moments in your life where you just need to step back, reflect and do some real soul searching about yourself and what you want in life? That’s pretty much where I’ve been at lately, and I now feel like I’m somewhat ready to find my footing again and move forward.

Thankfully, we recently got back from a very fun and relaxing vacation with the besties. I think we all needed that trip, and it was great to get away and not have to worry about being responsible for anything for a few days. Mr. Moth spotted a really cool book shop called BAM! (Books a Million) that we happily checked out. We each left with some new additions for our bookshelves and Cupcakes & Machetes and I enjoyed some seriously delicious coffee from the book store’s cafe. ❤

Hopefully this latest book haul can help me finish my Goodreads reading challenge before the year ends. I’ve read 42/50 books/graphic novels so far this year, so I think I’m in good shape to complete my goal. 🙂

Fall is fast-approaching, and I always find myself feeling more creative this time of year. Do you have a certain season that brings out your creative side? I just bought my supplies for this year’s Inktober art challenge, and for the most part, I’m digging this year’s prompts.

Given how hectic and crazy things like to be, I’m not even going to attempt to predict how the remaining months of this year are gonna go, but a few things I know I want to continue working on/toward are:

• Inktober art Challenge in October and NaNoWriMo Writing Challenge in November.
• Making more time for myself and the things I want to achieve and enjoy doing.
• Not stressing as much and learning to embrace things/go with the flow more.

What are your big plans for the fall? What kinds of projects and/or goals are you currently working toward? 

Dorohedoro Read-A-Thon Part 1: Vol. 1 & 2

It’s no secret that I love the anime Dorohedoro. I mean, my husband and I named our husky puppy after the character Noi from it, and we started gathering supplies for working on a cosplay of our favorite dynamic duo Shin and Noi for conventions late last year. 😀

I’ve wanted to make the jump over to the manga series that inspired the anime for a while now, but at a sprawling 23 volumes, my wallet was a little less enthusiastic about the venture. Thankfully, I have the bestest friends and husband ever, and they treated me to the entire collection at Christmas. (When I tell you my eyes were popping out of my skull when I opened the gift and saw the ENTIRE collection in front of me, it doesn’t even fully convey the excitement I felt.) I was so surprised and elated, and I immediately wanted to shut myself into an isolated cabin in the woods and read each book aloud for all to hear. I mean, that always works out okay in the movies, right? 😉

Much like summoning demons after reading something in Latin that you probably shouldn’t have, it’s always a little intimidating checking out the source material from a show or movie you absolutely love. Will it live up to your expectations? Is the show you enjoy even anything like what you’re about to read? Will you love the characters as much? Will you love them even MORE and then see where the show is suddenly lacking?? These are all legitimate concerns, I feel. So, I am setting that fear aside and stepping forward, excited and curious about the wonders and pitfalls I may encounter exploring my beloved anime’s origins through the manga, and even getting to read beyond where the anime left off to see where the story goes and what becomes of my favorite characters come the end of the series. That said, let’s get on with this Read-A-Thon, shall we? 😀

Dorohedoro, Volume 1, by Q. Hayashida

A blood-spattered battle between diabolical sorcerers and the monsters they created.
Caiman was not lucky. A sorcerer cursed him with a reptile head and left him with no memory of his life before the transformation. Adding to the mystery, there’s a specter of a man living inside him. But Caiman has one key advantage: he’s now completely immune to magic. Along with his best friend, Nikaido, Caiman is hunting down sorcerers in the Hole, searching for the one who can undo his curse and killing the rest. But when En, the head Sorcerer, gets word of a lizard-man slaughtering sorcerers, he sends a crew of “cleaners” into the Hole, igniting a war between two worlds.

I really like the rough, sketchy style of artwork by Q. Hayashida. It perfectly fits the chaotic and hyper-violent world she’s cobbled together for Dorohedoro. Which brings me to another thing I’m enjoying about this series: I’m a total sucker for worldbuilding and complex characters, and Q. Hayashida delivers both in spades. To the point that sometimes you aren’t even really sure which characters you should be rooting for, and which (if any) are actually the bad guys. The series wastes no time kicking off the violence, and from there it only continues along at breakneck speed on its dark and gritty but also silly and fun rampage.

Dorohedoro, Volume 2 by Q. Hayashida

Once a year, hordes of the dead rise and roam the streets of the Hole, hungry for live flesh. And every year, Caiman and Nikaido sign up for the local zombie-killing contest! Whoever sends the most zombies back into the ground will win some fantastic prizes. But the fun ends quickly when En’s cleaners finally track down Caiman and Nikaido. Somebody’s going to lose their head. Literally.

Remember when zombies exploded in popularity and almost became too mundane because of it? Well, the zombies roaming around in the Hole in the second volume of Dorohedoro have a unique twist all their own that makes them anything but boring.

My immediate reaction upon reading the first 2 volumes is being pleasantly surprised by how well the anime stuck to the source material. Even so, both mediums do a good job bringing their own magic to the series, and the manga serves to further flesh out the world and its characters that I’ve come to love in the anime, so needless to say, I very much look forward to reading the rest of this series!

What are you reading right now? Get any good books over the holidays?? If you had to get cursed by a sorcerer and given the head of any animal, which one would you choose??? Inquiring minds want to know!

August 2022: Victories, Video Games and Vaudeville

Is anyone else absolutely blown away by how quickly this summer is going by?? I, for one, am always Team Autumn so I’m not completely heartbroken about it, but it’s certainly shocking that August is already nearly at an end!

As per usual, things have been pretty busy. Family medical stuff, work, big career moves, and more haven’t left me with as much free time as I’d like but I think I still managed to squeeze in some time for a lot of good stuff. 🙂

READING:

Cupcakes & Machetes and I had a couple back-to-back buddy reads, and as luck would have it, we really enjoyed BOTH books!

Mexican Gothic, by Silvia Moreno-Garcia was the first of the books we read, and we’ll be posting a buddy review for it in the near future over on our joint blog Sugar & Scream so keep an eye out to find out what we thought of this gothic horror! 😉

Funny Farm: My Unexpected Life with 600 Rescue Animals, by Laurie Zaleski. This one was C&M’s pick and I was a little reluctant, expecting it to be a total tear jerker but although it definitely had its sad points, it was SUCH a good book. C&M already posted her review for it over on her blog, so be sure to check it out. We both loved it!

As for solo reads, I’m currently reading I’m Glad My Mom Died, by Jennette McCurdy. As shocking as the title is, it isn’t hard to see her motivation behind it while reading through the chapters I have so far. The author does not hold back anything as she unveils the story of her mother’s manipulative, psychologically abusive and toxic parenting, as well as the way the life of a young child actor was forced upon her when she never even wanted it.

BAKING:

I tackled a new dessert and baked a S’mores Cake for my sister-in-law’s birthday. We’re talking a graham cracker crust bottom, chocolate cake, vanilla marshmallow frosting, topped with toasted marshmallows, a chocolate drizzle, and graham cracker crumbs.

My dad’s birthday is right around the corner as well, so I just picked up the ingredients to make him the cherry cheesecake that was his birthday treat of choice this time around. 🙂

DRAWING:

With limited free time this month, I haven’t drawn anything yet in August, buuuuut I am brainstorming some ideas for a video game themed collaboration with C&M’s hubby for his streaming channel https://www.twitch.tv/heathen_rite this November. (More to come on that later!) 😉 I’m also eagerly anticipating the prompts for some of October’s art challenges like #inktober and #corpsetober to pop up (hopefully) in the near future so I can start cooking up some ideas for spooky season as well.

WRITING:

Writing has been touch and go lately. With a lot of family stuff going on and whatnot, I haven’t had much time for writing, but when I have, it’s been a lot more productive than usual. Now that I’m taking medication for my ADHD, I can definitely see a difference in my ability to focus and not get as distracted by other things during writing time and other activities. It’s been really nice. 🙂

EVENTS:

I recently got the honor of presenting at this year’s International Gentle Teaching Conference. It was such a great experience and I couldn’t have asked for a better person to co-present with. This was definitely a high point for me in my career and I’m so proud to have gotten the opportunity to present among so many wonderful speakers. Public speaking is TERRIFYING to me, but thankfully, since I’ve started actually treating my anxiety, it is now something that is much more possible.

As for events coming in the near future, after a few years off due to Covid, Theatre Bizarre finally makes it’s grand return to Detroit this October! If you don’t know what that is, imagine the most epic Halloween party ever. Multiple floors in one of Detroit’s historic buildings are transformed into one big spooky bash with live performances, sideshow acts galore, fire performers, devils and deranged clowns, and more. We immediately snagged our tickets as soon as they went on sale. Aaand, to make things even better, Mr. and Mrs. C&M are attending this year for their very first time! We’re so excited to get to go together this time around. Time to start working on costumes! 😀

In other vaudeville-themed news, I also recently got in touch with another event planner in our neck of the woods and got the inside scoop that they will be bringing back the “Carniville of Madness” (a Gatsby style upscale event with performers and oddities) which made its debut before the pandemic hit. Mr. Moth and I had a blast there but since their first year was right before Covid, we feared they may not make a return. Thankfully, those worries were put to rest and we now have another great costume event to look forward to.

Also, a couple’s resort vacation with Mr. & Mrs. C&M is right around the corner and after all the stress and chaos the past couple years have brought, we are ready for a relaxing vacation with our besties! ❤

AAAAND, we haven’t nailed down the details yet, but in October Mr. Moth and I will be celebrating our 2nd wedding anniversary, so we’re hoping to swing another vacation at that point too to celebrate. ❤

VIDEO GAMES/ENTERTAINMENT:

Re-playing Mario games with Mr. Moth for fun is always a nice way to enjoy a bit of free time.

I’ve also been continuing along on completionist mode in Hungry Shark World. After you beat the game, you unlock 2 extra sharks that have really high goals and I just pick at those goals when I need to mindlessly de-stress for a bit.

I’ve had a lot of fun lately nerding out with Imperial Rebel Ork over the Predator movies. We even did a buddy review over on the Sugar & Scream blog for the latest film installment in the franchise Prey.

So, that pretty much sums up how things have been going on my end. How have you guys been? Any exciting August moments I may have missed? How’s your summer been??

January 2022 Wrap-Up

Well, after dodging covid for nearly 2 full years, it finally reared its ugly head in our home. My husband and I had both been having these weird headaches for a few days and honestly, we have been so careful and had barely even gone anywhere around the time this happened other than the grocery store (both of us were even off work when this all happened) so the last thing we were expecting was covid. Well, my husband was due for surgery that week so he had to get tested and sure enough, he tested positive. 😦

Thankfully, other than being tired and having the bad headaches it was all very mild. Thanks, Science! 😀 Very, very glad we were both vaccinated and had our boosters. It could have been so much worse. Anyway, my husband’s surgery had to get postponed, so that’s coming up this week. We both had masks on when we went to the store, so that is just further proof that this Omicron variant isn’t fucking around. Be careful out there, guys. ❤

There were several other things that made January kind of a rough month, but I’m just thankful none of it was as bad as it could have been. Anywayyy, here are some things that brought me some joy in a month I would otherwise sum up as “mildly horrible”. 🙂

Books Read: 3

Vicious (Villains #1) by V.E. Schwab

I absolutely LOVED this book. Cupcakes & Machetes had read and raved about it years ago so it’s been on my radar for quite some time and I’m so glad I finally got around to reading it. I would have immediately dove right into the sequel but C&M and I are doing our annual beginning-of-the-year Harry Potter buddy read. It’s the fourth year, which means it’s time for Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, baby! 😀

I recently decided that I wanted to re-visit some of the spooky comics I loved back in my teenage years, so I started re-reading the GloomCookie series of graphic novels by Serena Valentino. Volume 1 held up, with gothic modern fairy tale-like stories and spooky-cute characters and humor. I still enjoyed volume 2 as well, but not quite as much as the first one. A lot of the characters were just too angsty and bitchy this time around for me. Still gonna continue reading the series though. 🙂

Baking Buddies: New Achievement Unlocked!

I’m usually the baker in our household, but my husband joined in on the fun last month and we ended up making 3 different desserts together. 2 were great, and the other was “meh”, but I enjoyed having a partner in confectionery crime. 🙂 He made a delicious peanut butter buttercream for one of the desserts, and it was his first time making any kind of frosting, so kudos to him! We share quite a few hobbies already so it was fun trying something new together.

Some of my Favorite Things I Watched:

The Lost Boys (You can check out the buddy review C&M and I did for it over on our joint-blog Sugar and Scream if you’d like!)

Demon Slayer -Kimetsu no Yaiba- The Movie: Mugen Train (OMGGGG! Amazing animation and fight sequences, and it’s got me so hyped for season 2!!)

Attack on Titan, Season 4 Part 2 (If you aren’t watching this show yet, GET. YOUR. LIFE. TOGETHER. AND. WATCH. THIS. MASTERPIECE. Seriously, if it doesn’t pull you in by the first episode alone I’d be stunned.)

Hobbies: Drawing and Writing

I’ll have to do a post soon with the drawings I made during January. (I think I only did like 3 for the whole month, but one was a rough/practice comic page, so that was fun and different.)

As for writing, it was a pretty productive month for working on my book’s second draft, especially given how stressful things were.

Leveling up to 35: My Birthday

With everything going on, it ended up being a very low key kind of birthday. My husband gifted me with a bounty of awesome books/graphic novels, and we got takeout from one of our favorite local restaurants (with cookie butter cheesecake for dessert!) 😀

Well, that pretty much sums up my first month of 2022. I hope you guys had a better start to the new year! ❤ What was your favorite part of January? Any plans for February that you’re excited for?

My Year in Books: 2021

Does anyone else look forward to when Goodreads posts your “Year in Books” at the end of the year? 🙂 I always think it’s fun looking back on things you’ve done throughout the year, so maybe that is something I’ll try to keep better track of in 2022 in general. For now, though, I’ll just let GR do most of the work.

This year I surpassed my goal of reading 30 books/graphic novels, and read a total of 45. (Though, let’s be honest, A LOT of those were graphic novels this year.) 😉

The SHORTEST book I read was: The Time Machine by H.G. Wells, at 118 pages.

The LONGEST book was: NOS4A2 by Joe Hill, at 692 pages.

Favorite Buddy Read of the Year: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling

Favorite Novel I Read This Year: The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

Favorite Graphic Novel I Read This Year: I literally read all 34 volumes of the manga of Attack on Titan by Hajime Isayama, so I think it’s a safe bet to say this one took the cake for me in 2021. 😛

How was your own year in reading? What was your favorite book/graphic novel you read in 2021? How many books do you hope to read in 2022?

 

November 2021 Wrap-Up

Hello, December! ❤ It’s kind of bizarre to think that 2021 has already nearly come to an end. It feels like we were JUST wishing for 2020 to be over. What even IS time anymore since the pandemic hit? 0.o

I hope you guys all had a great November. 🙂 What was your favorite part of the month? Here’s some of the things I enjoyed most throughout November:

NaNoWriMo: NaNoWriMo was definitely interesting this year. This was the first year I’ve gone into it in 2nd Draft/Revisions mode, so it was a little more difficult for me to get my footing at first. I definitely added to my word count and fleshed out a lot of the bare bones areas of the book, but I also spent a lot of time moving things around and merging my new material in with the old. Near the end of the month I found myself less focused on the word count, and more focused on just doing whatever needed to be done. All in all, I may have veered off course as far as my original NaNoWriMo goal, but I still think it was a very successful month of writing/editing, and I’m proud of what I accomplished in that amount of time. 🙂

Buddy Read: Cupcakes & Machetes and I did a buddy read for Science Fiction month of The Time Machine by H.G. Wells. If you want to see what we thought of it feel free to check out our post we did about it.

Thanksgiving: We kept things very small, just immediate family, and everyone involved was vaccinated. I like laid back holidays so I thought it was really nice. ❤ My dad and I love Bruce Campbell, so we watched his new movie Black Friday.

Watching: My favorite shows I watched this month are definitely Arcane (on Netflix) and Dragula, Season 4 (on Shudder).

Reading: I only finished reading ONE thing this entire month, and it was my buddy read with C&M. Buuuut, I did also just start reading Erin Morgenstern’s The Night Circus, which has been very interesting right from the beginning. 🙂

Video Games: I’ve been playing a lot of Mario Kart 8 this week. 🙂 

Baking: Meh. I was pretty excited to try this no bake pumpkin pie recipe, but it was bland as hell, to be honest. I’ve only ever tried making 2 pumpkin pies in my life, both for Thanksgiving with my family, and both were terrible. The first one was when I was a kid, my dad and I made a gorgeous pumpkin pie but forgot one of the ingredients… SUGAR. D: So I guess failing at pumpkin pie is a family tradition at this point. lol

What are you most excited for in December? Any last minute projects or goals you have going on before the new year? 🙂

 

Mission Accomplished: First Draft

“Writer Girl Summer” is finally at its end, and so is my blog hiatus I was on. My entire summer was pretty much just a caffeine-fueled writing frenzy of utter madness. It feels really damn good though to have completed my (very rough) first draft. I am so ready to take a much-needed break from writing to let the story breathe, and to regain some of my sanity before I go on to tackle the dreaded second draft.

Luckily for me, Halloween is just around the corner, so I’m going to use the full month of October to recover from my crazy writing binge and to just focus on doing all the things I love to indulge in during spooky season. We’re talking horror movies galore, catching up on some creepy video games, reading scary stories, fall baking, etc. I’m also planning to participate in the 2021 Corpsetober Art Challenge, so I’m really excited to get back into drawing. I really didn’t draw much this summer since I was so focused on completing the first draft of my book, so I can’t wait to get back at it and practice some more with my iPad Pro. It was kind of torturous just seeing it collect dust all summer, but I’m glad I remained focused. 

I can’t wait to start catching up on everyone’s blogs over the next several days, and see what you guys have been up to while I was away. In the mean time, how was your summer?? What are you most excited for this fall?

37 Day Hiatus

Oof. Deadlines are ROUGH. As I previously mentioned, this summer is all about finishing the first draft of the book I’ve been plotting/writing. Now that I’m in the home stretch (just 37 days left to go) I really need to shift my focus into high gear and remain focused. It’s because of this that I’ve decided to take the remainder of this summer off from my blog and devote just about all of my attention and free time to making my self-imposed deadline.

I’ll still be contributing to Sugar and Scream during this time though, so I won’t be totally removed from WP. Here’s hoping I make it back with a completed first draft AND my sanity intact come the fall. 😉

 

Pup Cups, Pumpkins, and Photos: July 2021 Wrap-Up

Update #1: Pup Cups

My mom and I like to try to get together for coffee once a week, specifically Biggby frozen coffees with extra espresso in them because we are absolute fiends for caffeine. Well, as of late, our girls’ day coffee adventures have only gotten better with the addition of a third member of our “Treat Yo’ Self” squad, that being my parents’ new resident fluff monster that they got a few months back. (Like this dog needed any more reasons to love going for car rides.) 😛

 

Update #2: Pumpkin Babies

Our pumpkin patch is already fast at work producing flowers and pumpkin babies for the fall. I think this pumpkin patch will always hold a special place in my heart, not only because I love pumpkins, but also because the first harvest was for our wedding last October. ❤ Hopefully this year’s harvest will be just as good!

Update #3: Writing Progress

Writer Girl Summer is going really well. 🙂 I’ve mostly been cruising along right on track to have my first draft complete by the first day of fall, so here’s hoping I can keep this pace up. *fingers crossed*

Update #4: Reading, Or Rather, a Lack There Of

I didn’t get much reading done in July, mostly due to a misplaced charger for my Kindle that has thankfully since been found. Also, when I wasn’t writing, let’s be honest, I was mostly watching a ton of anime. While my kindle charger was misplaced, I had to take a break on finishing Pet Sematary for my buddy read with Cupcakes & Machetes, I started reading Leigh Bardugo’s Ninth House.

Update #5: Drawing

Other than completing the Drawing Shark Week art challenge I participated in, I didn’t get a whole lot of drawing time in since this summer my focus is mostly on writing. Buuuut I’m hoping to at least squeeze in a couple Fan Art Friday posts this month since my last one was *GASP* all the way back in mid-May??! I can’t even keep up with time these days it seems. 2021 is just barreling by at breakneck speed and it’s all I can even do to try to remember what day it is half the time. Back to the point though, it will be good to get some more practice in with Procreate and my iPad Pro. I’m still loving it, I just have soooo much to learn!

Update #6: Watching

July mostly had me been binge-watching the first 4 seasons of My Hero Academia with my husband, but I also started Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood on my own. We also enjoyed the 3 week Netflix event for the Fear Street trilogy of movies. I think we may have squeezed a couple other movies in as well, but the only one coming to mind at the moment is Gunpowder Milkshake.

Update #7: Baking

For my husband’s dad’s birthday I made a triple chocolate cake. My husband also really enjoys these honey cornbread muffins I make so I made some of those which we enjoyed with honey cinnamon butter. (SO good.) I also have an abundance of frozen blueberries I want to use up, so this weekend I made blueberry muffins. Aaaand if you follow the Sugar and Scream blog that C&M and I host together, you’ll have seen some pics of freshly baked bone-shaped snickerdoodle cookies we posted about in early July.

What shenanigans did you get up to in July? Any big plans for August? Hoping you all have an excellent month! 😀

Enjoying The Finer Things in Life: Baking, Video Games, Reading and Kitties

Ughhhh, work has been quite a doozy lately, to the point that I was in complete and utter zombie-mode each day when I got home. This weekend I decided to just indulge in some of the more relaxing things that make me happy. A Friday night drink/video chat with my amazing BFF Cupcakes & Machetes, some baking (Chocolate Coconut Cream Cake and a nice honey beer bread), playing lots of Super Mario 3D World on the Switch with my awesome husband while our adorable cat Bailey cuddles up with us, binge-reading a bunch of the Attack on Titan volumes of the manga which have been on my TBR list forever, and just enjoying the time off. I know next week will be just as tiring at work due to us being extremely short-staffed at the moment, but I’ll worry about that come Monday. For now, I’m just enjoying myself and relaxing. ❤

I hope you guys are all finding your own ways to unwind and find some joy. What’s your go-to boredom vanquisher these days? 🙂