Amy Laurens's Blog, page 51
March 12, 2019
Launch Party for How Not To Acquire A Castle
Woohoo! The date has been confirmed. Unfortunately I can’t do the launch on the actual release date as planned due to conflicting dayjob commitments. But! We have a date! There shall be cake! Fun shall be had! Woohoo!!
If you’re in the Canberra, Australia region, come along and hang out :3
Read more:Animator vs Animated - The Original and The Best General Updateriness, New Releases, That Sort of ThingEnjoy the Holidays
March 11, 2019
Guess What These Pictures Have In Common :D
It has come to my attention that I have been neglecting the ‘cute and furry’ category of posts lately, and I AM HERE TO RECTIFY THIS.
Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to try to figure out what all of the following pictures have in common. Go!
Answer? They all relate to a fact in this list of 36 awesome and random facts about animals that you probably didn’t know.
Now, lists like this are usually pretty meh for me: HERE ARE 37 ANIMALS YOU DIDN’T KNOW EXISTED! (me: seen it,...
March 10, 2019
Made-It Monday: Inklets
Welcome to #MadeItMonday, where I post something I’ve made in the previous week, and where you can join in and post something you made too! The rules are easy: post a pic somewhere of something you’ve made in the last week (ish; let’s say in the last month as the hard-and-fast) and tag it. Sit back and enjoy scrolling through all the beautiful things we’ve collectively created, and celebrate the fact that humans can be awesome!
The big news this week is that the second half of the 2019 Inkle...
March 7, 2019
From Finner: Friday Music Love
So, I’ve decided that since I’m actually using a playlist to write the current novel, I might as well actually *share* that playlist with you, at least in bits and pieces — and at least the highlights.
This is #FoxBook, also currently known as Fox Red (though that may end up changing), and the first few chapters of Version 1 ended up in the AAYAA young adult anthology, That Moment When, which you can grab from Amazon for free.
This song is one of my favourites; it’s the lyrical, haunting to...
March 5, 2019
Humanity Is AWful; Humanity Is Kind. (I Dare You Not To Cry.)
Yesterday, @Nicole_Cliffe, whom I do not know except for this brief encounter, started a thread on twitter, asking for times when strangers have been kind to us.
Please. Take time to read the thread. You will not be sorry.
This article, linked to in the thread, is also very much worth your while: a story about Hamlet, and the cruelties of the world, and the taxi driver who intervened.
Read it, and then leave your shame behind. Leave it here.
Right here.
My own contribution to the thread...
March 4, 2019
The Bit I Forgot About “The Wasporcist”
So, Inklet #5, The Wasporcist, is out now – hurrah! But I realised something last night, as I finally lay down to sleep at nearly 1am after dealing with a vomiting small person and writing cover lessons for my classes today: my ears started ringing – you know, that high-pitched whine they sometimes get for no apparent reason? – and I realised that I’d forgotten to put that in the ‘Making Of’ section of The Wasporcist.
I had totally forgotten that most of why that story came about was actual...
March 3, 2019
Made-It Monday: Dragon Wings
Welcome to #MadeItMonday, where I post something I’ve made in the previous week, and where you can join in and post something you made too! The rules are easy: post a pic somewhere of something you’ve made in the last week (ish; let’s say in the last month as the hard-and-fast) and tag it. Sit back and enjoy scrolling through all the beautiful things we’ve collectively created, and celebrate the fact that humans can be awesome!
Made these for a birthday party a while ago: no-sew dragon wings...
February 28, 2019
How To Figure Out Which Book You Should Read Next
In lieu of our usual Friday video, today I present to you ‘Which Book?‘, a fantastic and intriguing website that allows you to plug in a number of factors about books you like, and then generates a suggested reading list based thereon.
Factors include the obvious such as a happy book or a sad one, and a long book or a short one, but also include more quixotic factors such as ‘larger than life’ vs ‘down to earth’, and ‘beautiful’ vs ‘disgusting’.
Be warned, however: this can only give power...
February 27, 2019
February Short Story: At The Home Of The Winter King
Forgot to mention it last week, but the 23rd has been and gone and passed us by, which means another short story is up on my Patreon page 
February 26, 2019
The Plot Dot – A Writer Resource
Since this is apparently the week of sharing stumbles, I stumbled across this online the other day too and it’s kind of fun: The Plot Dot, a resource by bestselling YA author Derek Murphy. This is the full copy of his book on slideshare (not pirated – he put it there and links to it from his site) and while it’s reasonably light on content, it’s an intriguing and different approach to planning a novel. I’m on a bit of a visual-/sensory-planning kick at the moment (i.e. using music and images...
