Book Bites' hiatus

Hello my lovelies! Gosh I miss you! And blogging! And ebooks! And everything about the internet that I can't do over my phone!

I need to apologise! Three months and no word from me! :o I was on holiday and had planned to be away for a mere month or so, but when I returned to Sydney, my computer died and I have been without the internet ever since. Regular readers will know that I quit my job to pursue other interests (including blogging and writing - kinda need a computer for those!) and while I am looking for a part time job (so I can do part time archaeology as well), I have a very stunted cash flow. Basically that means I can't afford to fix my computer at the moment, or any time soon *kicks motherboard* I was planning on buying a small netbook with my tax return, but I used it to buy flights to volunteer at an archaeology convention in my home town. Totally worth it, but... Well I really miss having a computer *sigh* I'm an internet addict, so this has been driving me insane.

I am currently at a library using their computers, however I usually get to the library on closing and the computers are busy. Today was pure luck! So, here I am. Explaining. And gosh I miss Book Bites! Oh, I suppose this is the perfect opportunity to say welcome to all the new faces!! :D I know quite a number of you from twitter and your own blogs, but I shall say welcome all the same! And apologise that I haven't been able to say welcome before today.

So, what have I been up to in the last three months? Well I went home to Toowoomba for a month or so - I had a blast! And had some ideas for a dystopian story clobber me over the head. I'm using them for NaNoWriMo this year, which is handy.  I'm going absolutely crazy not being able to read any book I want to, and being limited to the library's collection and my own bookshelves is hard. I can't charge my ereader, and I can't upload new books to it without my computer anyway, so that avenue has also been closed to me. So yes, I have also been seriously searching for a new job - something which is also hard without a computer LOL I've also been attending some readers and writers events in the last few months and I'll be blogging about Paula Roe's talk at the Burwood library in a few days.

So, where do I go from here? I will be attempting to upload some posts from my Android Blogger app, but I am not sure how good the formatting will be. I would like to say sorry in advance if there are any issues with typos, images, alignment, quotes, italics, bold font, and anything else that can go wrong and probably will go wrong... Murphy's Law and all that... I had some giveaways planned, and some guest bloggers lined up, but I'll be leaving those until I have my computer up and running again. And no, I have no idea when that will be. It might be in 2012, unless a nice cushy job falls in my lap today *looks up expectedly* Nope, nothing happened... So, basically I have no idea when I can get my computer fixed. I have some techy friends of friends, but I can't afford to pay them, and I don't expect them to work for free. So it may be a while before Book Bites can power forward again.

I hope you are all well, that your TBR pile is nice and beefy and that life is providing you with the time to read them!

Book Bites on hiatus because of NaNoWriMo!

I won’t be posting my usual memes for a few weeks. I have been distracted by planning for NaNoWriMo, and now writing, so I haven’t been reading all that much. Add to that, the books I _want_ to read were lent to me by Rosie, and I have a rule about borrowed books – they don’t leave the house! So I haven’t been reading as frenetically as I normally do. I've just been reading a few chapters a day. As someone who reads most of a book per day, this is quite mind boggling for me, but I just haven’t been able to churn through them like I normally do. I think I could if I could take them with me during the day – I am so rarely home! But books that travel with me become well loved. My book bag also has my notebook, bottle of water, and umbrella, so it never stays pristine. If it is my books, that is okay. I don’t mind a book that is well loved. But I am not going to prematurely age someone else’s books! So they get to stay cuddled up on my bed while I go to work *sigh* This is also the reason I am still reading Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. Because I have all these goodies waiting at home for me to read, I haven’t been just reading Never Let Me Go. I read it in my lunchbreak and while I am commuting, but not at home. I’ll have to start, because the book club I am reading it for is on the 13th of November! I've only read two thirds of it so far! I am really really enjoying it however. It seems to be the type of book that sneaks up on you. You aren’t expecting it, but it just keeps on drawing you in. I don’t know how to define this book AT ALL! I don’t know who I would recommend it to, or who else would appreciate it. It will definitely be on my recommendation list however.

I am currently focusing on Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro and Beyond The Night by Joss Ware. Both are dystopian, but with different bents. Beyond The Night seems to be a dystopian romance or science fiction romance? I haven't gotten far enough in to see if it is a romance, but it definitely has that feel to it. The story is interesting enough and the writing is good enough that I haven’t been focusing on the couple, but the whole story. I can’t wait to see what happens!! And if the Strangers have created those zombie like creatures! o_O And how they kicked off the apocalypse! Love it!
Edit: I finished it last night. Epic! So buying this series!


As I mentioned, I am undertaking NaNoWriMo this year. It started this week, and to put it simply, it is an international month-long write-a-thon. The goal is to write 50,000 words in the month of November. So I would basically need to write just under 2,000 words per day. That doesn’t seem like a lot, but life gets in the way. I don’t want to be writing complete and utter crap, and I have a very definite story in mind. I gave up on the concept of writing seriously when I was a teenager, so I am doing this for myself. I spend all my time editing, reworking and waxing lyrical and never finish a story. I am using this NaNo to try and overcome that problem. I’m not allowed to get hung up on editing. Which is going to be so bloody hard! I am the type of person who dithers over each sentence, and the challenge for me is to leave them be and come back latter to edit them. The problem with that is that I love words. I love making them work together, and I love them individually. So choking that impulse down will be difficult. I am already behind, so I need to up my daily goal to catch up. I am writing by hand, so I don’t have a fancy automatic word count *sigh* I thought I had a system worked out for estimating, but I counted it by hand yesterday, and I am about 1000 words behind what I thought. So instead of being about 4000 words I am about 3000, give or take. I was sick yesterday, so I only wrote 3 pages *sad face* I went to a write-in in the city on Wednesday night and found it really helpful, so I think I am going to go to the one on Sunday as well. I’ll miss the one next Wednesday because it is the same night as the Galaxy EOY party. I also miss the Galaxy book club because I am going to see Metallica (!) perform *grins* Worth missing one night, surely! Anyway, I am hoping the write-ins help me spew words onto the page, because leisurely scrawling in my lunchbreak is only churning out 3 to 5 pages… those pages have anywhere from 150-200 words per page, so it really isn’t enough! :( My friend Ari has already passed 25000 words!!! And Bons has passed 10000! O.O I need to get my freak on! Wish me luck! I already want to go back and edit the crap out of it *sigh* Are you doing NaNoWriMo? Do you want to add me as a buddy? I do have a writing blog, but I am not really writing much on there at the moment. Nothing is ready for someone else to read. It needs a lot of pruning! Instead I am commenting on twitter and facebook LOL You can add me at http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/user/682560 and follow me on twitter at http://twitter.com/obsidiantears83 Good luck if you are doing NaNo this year! :D

I have a rule for November not to read anything urban fantasy, because I am writing an urban fantasy and I don’t want to be influenced, even subconsciously! Already it is starting to seem like her dog is a little bit more than just a dog *sigh* I need to turn him back into a canine and not a lupine! Maybe he is just a smart and empathetic puppy?

Oh, and I am also reading up on Jung's theory of collective unconsciousness in relation to my story :)

Also, I am hopefully buying the Sony Reader next week! :D I am so freaking excited!!!

Sorry if there are any typos or badly constructed sentences above! I haven't time to proof it, and I wanted to get it up and out there why I have been so quiet :) I may still pop in now and again, but I won't be blogging religiously!