Ooh, this is a fun question. I don’t have quite the insane character population as some other authors and… to be totally honest, I’m not really a huge fan of a lot of my characters. Don’t get me wrong, I love them, but… not so much that I really want to spend a lot of time with many of them.

But… the moment I read this question, I knew exactly who my answer was.

From Starsigns, it’s Tivory.

SPOILERS UPCOMING FOR STARSIGNS

Tivory is a tiny fairy, the first one we see that lets us know they’re real in the first place. But because his egg was shaped, molded, and carved before he was hatched, he’s got physical issues, like a partial leg and missing fingers.

The problem is, through Starsigns, we pretty much see his entire life, so… not easy to do a spinoff. I suppose I could choose one of the other fairies who does survive, easily. I mean, what I’d really want to explore would be fairy culture, how they live on their own when their eggs and trees are safe.

I know this is a short post but… that’s the answer. 

I honestly doubt I’ll ever actually revisit the world I built in Starsigns. If I did, though, that’s where I’d most likely explore.

I was a ridiculously avid reader as a child. I’m sure there are plenty of reasons we could delve into, but simply put, video games and books were my refuges. It shows in who I am now: a storyteller. All about the stories.

So, what was I reading as a kid?

I was all over the place, honestly. Regular trips to the library happened a lot, so I tended to be exposed to a lot all the time. I was in the right age groups and generation to be swept up by R.L. Stine’s Goosebumps books and K. A. Applegate’s Animorphs. I’m not much of a horror fiend— at least, I’m a little more now than as a kid, at least with books— so I avoided the slightly-more-horror Fear Street books in favor of the goofier Goosebumps. And I only made it so far in the whole Animorphs series. Never finished, but I did get a good ways in.

But to be totally honest, the books I most remember reading as a kid were the Children’s Great Illustrated Classics. I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned them before here, but they were a LOT of my childhood. Back in the olden days, before Wal-Mart even carried groceries, we could get these small paperback versions of the classics for fifty cents apiece. The books were squat and fat, but they were my lifeblood. Every other page was an illustration, and the text was obviously abridged, but I took in a ton of classics at a young age because of these editions. Dickens, Stevenson, Wells, and more were the author names I knew before I even hit double digits in age. 
Because of these books, The Count of Monte Cristo remains probably one of my favorite stories of all time. I adore Dickens, though I do find him a little overconveniently trite sometimes. H. G. Wells and Jules Verne are still some of my favorites and… I honestly need to revisit them more as an adult. Thanks for the reminder.

To sort of rapidfire at this point:

I discovered Middle Earth at age 10-11. First with The Hobbit and immediately taking me to The Lord of the Rings.

I did get into Harry Potter when I was in high school. I’m wanting to say my sophomore year, but it might’ve been my junior year. By then, 5 books were already out.

I suppose we can cap the “growing up” part of my life with say, my gap year between high school and college. So I’ll finish up by capping my childhood off with discovering Ender’s Game and Orson Scott Card in general.

Yeah, I have some serious personal problems with those last two authors now, but the fact remains that their books did affect me as I grew up. They got me through some hard times.

Fuck you, Joanne Rowling.

But I digress.

The fact I was reading so many of those classics means I actually missed out on actually reading a lot of children’s actual classics. I’ve never read Harriet the Spy, Charlotte’s Web, or anything by Roald Dahl. I only in the last 10 years actually read Little Women. 

There’s a balance to be had. Like, I’m familiar with the stories of the ones I’ve missed thanks to movie adaptations and such, but… I missed out on being a kid. A lot of us do that.

It’s not to say that I didn’t read things normal for kids. I had school assignments and all, so I read what my classmates were reading. Even in my leisure reading, I read age-appropriate stuff, targeted books. I was just never as tied to reading levels as some might be. If it was a book and I was interested, I was going to read it no matter what.

In fact, I have! For over a year now I’ve been using Libby. I switched mostly to that after leaving Audible as part of my “As little Amazon as possible” boycott.

While I do mostly borrow audiobooks, I’ve borrowed a few ebooks, as well. It’s generally a lot easier for me to consume via audiobook because I just cannot dedicate time to physically reading as much as I would like. It takes actual pausing in everything else to sit and read, as opposed to being able to be listen to audio while cleaning, cooking, etc.

Most notably, I’ve recently finished listening to the main 8 Bridgerton books and the Happily Ever After anthology. As of the time I’m writing this post, I’m just about to finish my first Kurt Vonnegut book, Cat’s Cradle. I listened to one of his short story anthologies, and I’m really trying to decide what I think of him as an author. I totally respect him; he’s fantastic. It’s just a matter of if his writing style really vibes with the kind of reader I am. A few of the short stories I was totally enamored with, but more often, I was kind of unimpressed. Same with the book I’m finishing up this week. We’ll see. I still want to give him one more really good shot, so yeah. (fun fact: the review for this book dropped here a few days ago. Go see what I ended up thinking!)

Honestly, using Libby/the library has opened me back up to a lot more books than I let myself get into while I was using Audible. My money isn’t tied up in these books, so I can take more chances, and if I don’t like something, I just return it early with no guilt.

I doubt I would’ve bothered with the Bridgerton books if I’d been on the hook to pay for them, honestly.

So yes. I highly recommend using your library or a library app to get books into you. I’ve also heard of Hoopla, so I need to look into that one, as well.

Just read, guys!

August was both better and worse than I expected. I got a lot done for free posts and such, but my big projects were largely stagnant-ish.

LitRPG book (working title Subscription Life) - Carving out writing time for this was not easy this month. Chapter 3 is at 1298 now. 876 words is all I’ve managed this month. I’ve been struggling with this one, and it’s probably going to end up being some stuff that gets cut in future edits because of that, but it’s at least good stuff that helps inform my future writing. I’m learning about the characters and world right now, how to really make things work, and that’s the struggle.

Collaboration Project - No movement yet.

Criminal From Birth sequel - Still with editor. It’s been rough. Still mulling over the title.

Vonnegut is an author I’d heard the name of for years but never really got exposed to. It wasn’t until I got back into using the library (via Libby) for audiobooks that I started branching far out into the book-o-sphere, and I saw my opportunity to check him out.
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My first exposure was Welcome to the Monkey House which was a nice broad intro of short stories, but I wanted to at least read one full novel. Naturally, I put what was available on hold and… I started waiting for my turn. Only three books were available to borrow: Welcome to the Monkey House, Slaughterhouse-Five, and Cat’s Cradle.

The first novel that came available was not the one I’d heard of, and I could’ve kept putting it off, but I decided I didn’t want Slaughterhouse-Five to bear so much pressure of representing Vonnegut’s novels well, so when Cat’s Cradle became available, I went ahead and listened.
I went into this novel not even having read the synopsis or any book blurbs. I legitimately went in blind to anything except the title, the author’s name, and an impression of his writing style from having listened to Welcome to the Monkey House. So when I say I listened to this book without a clue what I was in for, I mean that.

I’ve found, via the short stories and Cat’s Cradle, that Vonnegut weaves plot together in a loose knot. It wanders in an out of itself, dancing around the crux or epicenter of poignancy, not quite revealing what its goal is or where it’s headed, until Vonnegut is ready to pull it tight so it suddenly becomes an intricate knot. Like dominoes falling into a pattern or something, it just suddenly clicks. The sudden moment of “O. M. G.” I have when I suddenly understand what’s going on, what all these moving parts were heading for… that’s pretty heady.

It’s exactly what happened with Cat’s Cradle. What blows my mind is how rapidly Vonnegut really puts big pieces on the board, so to speak. We learn right away the world is basically over, that this book is about what happened, and we even learn the name of the scientist responsible. We start getting interviews about him, spawning from how the scientist— Felix Hoenikker— was one of the creators of the atomic bomb. The author is wanting information regarding the bombing of Hiroshima… and in the long run, learns about a theoretical side project Hoenikker had entertained: a substance called ice-nine, intended to restructure the way water solidifies. Intended for military use— to keep Marines out of the mud— such a substance would hold the potential to convert all water on Earth into ice-nine.

Through a winding process of personal discovery and insanely odd religion, the author ends up converting and becomes mired in a small, fanatical nation heavily influenced by one of Hoenikker’s children, Frank. We learn that all three of Hoenikker’s children actually have a fragment of ice-nine, and Frank’s chip of it has put him in a position of influence. It’s only once the ice-nine is used as a form of euthanasia for the nation’s leader that the world… well, actually ends for real. Bigger than Hiroshima, bigger than any other disaster. The ice-nine-frozen body is accidentally dumped into the Caribbean, and… ice-nine freezes the world.

The thing is, Vonnegut telegraphed the ice-nine takeover multiple times. It was pretty much slapped on the wall once it was first mentioned that such a thing was going to be the end of the planet. It’s pointed at loudly fairly frequently, as an ominous note that ice-nine is around, in Frank’s pocket, or in his brother Newt’s luggage, and so on. It’s there. It’s THERE.

Personally, most of the time I was listening to the book, I was sort of absorbing it on surface level only. I wasn’t sure I wanted to “let Vonnegut in” so to speak. I’m not sure what I was afraid of, but I was honestly holding the book at arm’s length. Maybe it’s his reputation, my natural hesitation at things recommended to me. Not that Vonnegut was ever personally recommended to me. I think that’s the difference. If something’s recommended by someone who knows me, I’m more likely to trust that. But the general populace… it can be hit or miss with me. When you hear big names get dropped a lot, or fad or popular media, it can be hard to pick which ones might actually resonate with yourself. Like… people love the Austin Powers movies. They were all the rage when I was in high school. I’ve never seen a one and refuse to. I only watched Squid Game because I happened on a clip and enjoyed it, so I decided to see what else the fuss was about. But I adamantly declined to watch even a moment of Tiger King. I read Dungeon Crawler Carl and watched Arcane because a friend recommended it to me.

But Vonnegut… he was one I never had a direct recommendation for. I just knew his name and that he was considered a classic, notable author worth reading. But… that never told me why.

I doubt he’s going to be a favorite author of mine anytime soon, but after two books, I definitely think I can look forward to when Slaughterhouse-Five finally becomes available for me. The more I’ve thought about Cat’s Cradle, the more I realize I enjoyed it overall. So much of me enjoys the concept of spoilers when done right. I’m more interested in HOW something happens than what actually happens. Like… I grew up knowing Darth Vader was Luke Skywalker’s father, long before I ever watched a Star Wars film. And I saw the prequels first, so my first exposure was watching Anakin become Vader.

Once I recognized that that’s been what I’ve gotten from Vonnegut, I was able to really see Cat’s Cradle for what it was. Sad thing is, that didn’t happen until I began writing this very review. I’ve already put a hold on it again. I’m looking forward to listening again. And it’s the mindset I’ll be going into on Slaughterhouse-Five. Because I’m not reading any synopses or book blurbs or anything about it, either.