E. Menozzi's Blog, page 13

NaNoWriMo Prep Time: Story Idea

It’s that time of year again! Time to get ready for the biggest and best writing month of the year — November!!! It’s countdown to National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), friends!

If you have never heard of NaNoWriMo, it’s a one month writing challenge that surrounds you with a community of others who all want to write a novel. All you have to do is commit to (at least trying to) write 50,000 words in 30 days. That’s the length of a very short novel (ex: The Great Gatsby).

I’m not g...

August Reading Wrap-up

August turned out to be another big reading month. I ended up reading six books, evenly divided between fiction and non-fiction. I also managed to actually write down my thoughts in my reading journal for nearly all of the books I read this month! Big wins all around! (Except for the writing. Don’t ask about how the writing went.)

What I read in August:

Dangerous Alliance by Jennieke Cohen — This was a cute historical romance that also has a mystery sub-plot. I enjoyed it while reading...

A New Magical Readathon

In case you haven’t heard, Book Roast created a NEW Magical Readathon! It looks amazing, and I am definitely planning on participating. You can watch her video here to get all the details and the links to the printable maps and info sheets that she created. The whole thing is based around a world that she built, not around an existing fandom. It’s incredibly creative! I love it!

The kick-off of this readathon is divided into two parts. The first part is called “The Novice Path.” There are sev...

August Reading Journal Set-Up

Tomorrow is the first day of August, and we’re having a rare overcast summer day today. Perfect weather for a little crafty time! So, rather than just writing “August” in the middle of the cover page and surrounding it with doodles, I decided to bust out my Tombow dual tip brush markers and a drawing tutorial video and get my reading journal set up for the new month.

For the image on the cover page, I used a drawing tutorial from Draw So Cute on YouTube. I’ve been using her videos to help...

July Reading Wrap-up

It just occurred to me that I never posted my reading wrap-up for July. I finished the “outbox” page in my reading journal days ago, then I just sort of forgot to post it. So, let’s talk about what I read in July.

If you remember from my June wrap-up post, I finished reading Spaceside by Michael Mammay in the first few days of July, but I counted it toward my June reading because I’d read most of it in June. Well, after I finished reading that, I went on to read the final (?) book in tha...

Mid-Year Book Freakout Tag

Taking a quick break to do the Mid-Year Book Freakout Tag… This is a thing that happens over on BookTube, but I’m going to add my contribution over here on my blog.

1. Best book you’ve read so far in 2021: The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson
2. Best sequel you’ve read so far in 2021: Fugitive Telemetry by Martha Wells (The Murderbot Diaries #6)
3. New release you haven’t read yet, but want to: Son of the Storm by Suyi Davies Okungbowa
4. Most anticipated release for the second half ...

June Reading Wrap-up

June turned out to be a HUGE reading month for me. I read nine books!

What I read in June

I started off the month on a mystery kick. I got my mom into Deanna Raybourn’s Veronica Speedwell series because she (and I) liked Sherry Thomas’s Lady Sherlock series so much. She’s been devouring all the Veronica books while I’d only read the first one, and she’s coming for a visit soon, so I thought it was time to catch up. I read books two, three, and four in June. Of those, I liked book two (A Pe...

New Modern Fae Coming Soon…

Just a quick post to let you know that I’ve been working on a new Modern Fae novella that will be released on 25 June. You can get a copy for only 99¢ if you pre-order. You can also add it on Goodreads. And, if you want an Advanced Review Copy (ARC), there are 20 ebooks available on Booksprout.

Here’s the blurb:

Demons may be deadly, but dragons can steal your heart.

Seren was cast-out by her Elemental Fae kin because they believe that her magic is cursed. But that hasn’t stopped her fr...

June Reading Journal Set-Up

I think this month is going to be a rest and recharge month for me, which means I hope to read a LOT of books. Even though I have a mental list of books that I really want to get to this month, I am sticking with my no TBR policy and simple reading journal spread for now. Here’s my initial layout…

I got some new washi tape for my birthday. It’s the one on the left-hand page. You can’t really tell from the photo, but it’s a galaxy print with gold and silver foil stars on a black backgroun...

May Reading Wrap-up and Birthday Book Haul

May was not a great reading month for me, but I did get a lot of awesome new books for my birthday! Read on to find out more…

Sad little monthly spread for May.

The first book I read in May was The Enigma Game by Elizabeth Wein. This is another novel in her Code Name Verity world, but it features different characters. I really liked Code Name Verity but never got around to reading any of her other books. So when my book club buddies suggested that we read this, I read the blurb and agreed...