NaNotDeadYet!

Hey everyone,

Sorry for the long silence. Work clicked into overdrive toward the end of October, our big conference was the first weekend in November, and I decided to do NaNoWriMo. So my brain cells, to put it mildly, are few and far between.

I haven't read much new since I finished Scott Lynch's long-awaited The Republic of Thieves. I decided on a whim (because the leadup to Halloween always puts me in a spooky, magical mood) to do a full reread of the Harry Potter books. I'll have some thoughts about them eventually, but for now I've just been reveling in the re-immersion. It's astonishing how repeated watchings of the movies have altered my sense of the books, their quality, how much I enjoy them, especially the first two. I'm just starting Prisoner of Azkaban, which is one of my favorites, so I'll probably blog a bit about the first three when I'm done with it.

Also, in my very little spare time (ie: the times when my eyes are crossing at work and I need to zone out on something) I've been catching up on the Great Wheel of Time Reread over at tor.com, which has been hilarious. I first read the series my first year of college, when I had very few friends and a lot of time on my hands. I got really fed up with them around book 6, I think, but I persevered until book 9 just to see if they'd get better. They didn't. But there is so much that's good and interesting about the series, so the reread blog is like doing a supercondensed reread of my own-- I get to remember all the good parts without killing a hundred hours and handfuls of the aforementioned scant brain cells.

So that's where I'm at. I'm hoping to finish the few reviews I had started before work exploded, but I probably won't get to them until I hit the 40k mark with NaNo (don't want to jinx myself!) and I might end up skipping over them entirely and moving on to whatever book I kick off December with.

But seriously, if you've been thinking about The Republic of Thieves, read it. It was worth every second of the wait. AND I saw Scott Lynch speak at the book's premiere in Boston, and he promised that the 4th installment will be in our hands by Christmas next year. To which I responded, "!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" So that's good news for all Locke and Jean fans.

If any of you guys are doing NaNo, what are you doing to stay focused? I discovered @NaNoWordSprints, which has been immensely helpful... especially after I didn't write all last weekend on account of it being my 30th birthday and getting kidnapped by my besties for a weekend of eat-drink-and-be-merry. In case I needed the confirmation that I've definitely outgrown the "get wasted three nights in a row" stage of my life... yep, I got it.

Okay, back to work. Love!
<3 emily