[Tag] All About You and Around the Blogasphere

 

Greetings.

I was tagged in the All About You and Around the Blogasphere tag by the most Marvelous Mattie May of The Blossoming Writer, the lovely authoress who wrote and published the delightful  debut historical fiction novel Everlasting Gold. 

I am greatly in debt to Mattie for this, because as you can see I haven't posted in ages and really needed to get something out soon. Thanks to this tag, I can at last do that! Well I "could have" done it without the tag, but if I'm being honest, I would not have.



P.S. I would like to inform any bloggers who should happen to read this post that I am not going to be doing any blog tags that aren't themed around writing or reading, with some occasional exceptions. So if you by chance see this and stash away my blog name for future tags so you needn't go hunting later (it's okay, I do it too), please keep this in mind. Thank you!

Onto the tag!

Rules 

-Answer the following questions

-Tag at least a couple other bloggers

-Have them answer these questions

Questions

What's your favorite book/book series and why?

Wellwellwell, if it isn't the question I'm never capable of answering...
Alright I'm going to cheat and divide this up into very specific categories so as many of my favorites can fit into this as possible (if the NY Times can do it, so can I).

My favorite standalone would be The Last Dragon by Silvana De Mari. 

    I have loved this book since the very beginning of Bleeding Ink, and some time before it. I would say that it's the first book that showed me what my taste in books is.
I had read books that I loved before it (many a historical fiction novel and The Hunger Games trilogy being the ones that come to mind), but while I loved those books none of them were me. But in The Last Dragon, I really found myself in the voice of the book, in the world, in the characters. All of these things in ways which I really would not have expected. 
It also was one of the very first fantasies that I read, and so it also introduced much of my very favorite genre to me.
So many kudos and cookies are due to the translator who brought Mari's wonderful story to english-speaking readers such as myself.


My favorite MG fantasy series is The Ranger's Apprentice by John Flanagan. 

These books are so much fun. They're just loose adventures with endearing characters and a healthy amount of emotional issues. Halt and Will's mentor-mentee relationship is one of my favorite things ever, the horses are precious, the world is easy and fun, and the action is pretty good too.
I love them so much and I am delighted that they exist (though I am only in the third book so far). 

 
My favorite YA fantasy trilogy is the Dragons' Bane trilogy by Melody Jackson.

    This trilogy catches a lot of flack and is generally disliked by many people who read it. But it will forever hold a very near and dear place in my heart. There's so much depth to it, so much intention. It's easy to miss when you read it the first time, or even if you just read it without the willingness to see things a bit differently from how you're naturally inclined to. 
But once you see it, and once you follow the breadcrumbs of all the hidden amazingness, it is so, so cool. Not to mention, the emotion and humor and characters are just wonderful.
I have so much respect for what Jackson did with this trilogy, for the careful execution of the story and for one character and their arch in particular. 

My favorite adult fantasy series is The Stormlight Archive by Brandon Sanderson.

This series. It is phenomenal. 
 

My favorite YA sci-fi trilogy is The Fire Rain Chronicles by Miranda Marie.

    This trilogy was so. good. It's got a few things I really wasn't big on, but as a whole the characters, the overarching story, the prose - they were so solid. Marie did a great job on this trilogy and merged sci-fi, dystopia, and just a hint of fantasy together in such a delightful way.
This story is also very intense at times and I quite literally zoomed through all three books because of ye olden "I have to know what happens next" feelings in addition to the general fast-paced nature of it all.
Talking about this is making me feel that a re-read is due...

My favorite classic novel is  Great Expectations (I say, having not finished it even after five years)  or the Jane Eyre.

    But see this isn't even accurate because I read a lot of classics. So many. Because they're so easy to get a hold of in audiobook or physical copy, I probably read more classics than anything else. Besides that they're just so good, and have so much to offer that modern fiction doesn't.
I just really love classics.
Sherlock, Austen, Tolkien, Lewis, Twain, Montgomery, Alcott... I don't know, there's just so many books to love! Even getting into oddly specific categories won't fit everything in...

But anyways, I'll at least talk about the two I mentioned. Just know that there are many, many more and these are only two of them all.

Great Expectations - I just love this book so much. The atmosphere, the foreshadowing, the characters, the prose, the meaning, the depth, Joe Gargery. One can't not love Great Expectations. Well, unless you hate it because of the pain it gives you, but even then, that's still loving it. 

Jane Eyre - Another one of my favorites that catches much flack! Why must my reading taste be so controversial... Anyways I love this one not for the gothic appeal (I didn't even know this book was paraded as a gothic romance until after I read it, and only picked up on the occasional gothic feeling when I was reading) nor the romance (though it is there, I didn't see it as the focus at all, and also don't find it to be problematic as so many readers seem to) but for Jane. Jane is so very precious. She's so strong and endearing and beautiful, an absolute treasure of a character. 
She stands for what she believes, she- ... oh wait that's a spoiler. Basically she sacrifices things she loves, things she wants, for what she knows is good and right. She is such a good role model and definetly one of those characters I can think back on and find comfort and courage in.

(slipping in an extra here because talking about controversial opinions reminded me...) Dracula - I loved Dracula by Bram Stoker. Loved it, I tell you. And I hate vampires. So why did I love this book so much? The CHARACTERS. Oh my word did I love these characters. The bond they all had for each other, the deep love and care they had as a group, the strength and endurance they all showed in such traumatic situations- AH I just LOVE IT. 

Now liking Dracula isn't the controversial part. The controversial part is me saying that I didn't find it to be a deep conversation on the role of womanhood. Granted, I haven't studied Bram as I have other writers, so I really wouldn't know. But I read the book just as the book, and found the ladies to be lovely and strong (though they weren't my favorite characters), and the way the men treated them made lots of sense given the story and also just seemed normal and sweet? They all cared for them in different ways, as people tend to. 
But that is, perhaps, a conversation for another post in which I can talk full spoilers. 

My favorite children's novel is either Peter Pan or Alice's Adventures In Wonderland.

    I really love both of these books so much. They have two very different approaches to very similar topics. They're both about a child who goes into another world filled with magic and adventure.
But Peter Pan is a bit more dramatic when you think about it, and a bit tragic though in a good sort of way. It's full of fun and swashbuckling, little boy mischief and magic, and all sorts of wonderful things. But there's also quite a bit of deepness to it that hits every so often.
Peter Pan is definetly good just as a story, but it's also a very good conversation with young people about childhood and growing up (and even adults). 

Meanwhile, Alice In Wonderland is literal nonsense. Not in the romantic gothic way which people insist upon depicting it, but in a crazy, wacky, funny, absolutely perplexing way. Jam-in-a-watch sort of way. March-around-in-a-circle-while-water-washes-over-you-to-dry-off sort of way. Talk-to-a-stoner-caterpillar-and-take-his-advice-about-eating-mushrooms sort of way.  
Alice In Wonderland is pure fun nonsense. That is literally why Carroll came up with it - he was telling a story to a little girl named Alice, her sisters, and his friend, and Alice requested a story about complete nonsense. 
It's not a deep conversation, it's not got symbolism, it's just unhinged lunacy. It's funny and delightful, but it isn't deep (though you may say it's deep into madness). 

So I love both of these stories very much, for two very different reasons.



What is your favorite food?

Food is largely an unfortunate necessity for me and I don't really care for it as a whole (excluding chocolate. That does not count).  But I quite enjoy rice and various ways in which it is prepared, especially with bell peppers. 

Who is your favorite author?

I- I don't know.
I... don't know.
*returns to my crisis from earlier* 
I love so many authors. I have consistently enjoyed the majority of Jane Austen, Miranda Marie, Brandon Sanderson, and L.M. Montgomery. I know there's more but I'm just gonna cut it off there otherwise we really will be here forever.

What gives you inspiration for your books?

I always find this to be a bit of a silly question. What doesn't inspire me? A literal jar of soap inspired me once. Here I might actually have a picture...

Yeah that's poor quality but there it is. Literal cylinder of soap.
It inspired a mermaid story.

Anything and everything has the potential to inspire me. Once I heard a lady's name, and that sparked a whole story. Sometimes a random phrase will pop into my head and I'll turn it into something. Sometimes I'll hear a song and get a story out of it. 
There's no exact source, it's just life itself, really.

Though I suppose visuals are something that tend to generally inspire me. I have a collection of pictures of things that just sparked something in me, but those things haven't been turned into stories. 


If we want to be more specific, what inspired the stories I already have established and am working on, then that's still a wide variety of answers. The original spark for Roslyn was a prompt that said something about a character being turned into an inanimate object, the example being a chair or something. "Well that's weird," thought I, "and sounds like it'd be the makings of a comedy."
Then I paused and was like "WAIT." as the story of Roslyn was born in my mind.

The Rising was sparked into existence via the Bible. I have long stood on the perspective that the Bible is a high-fantasy story that is real. There's a magic system - it's God. There's dragons. There's battles and wars. There's kings and queens and princes and princesses. Rival kingdoms. Blessings, curses. Angels, demons. Swords.  Mountains. Sacrifice. Love. Passion. Honor. Duty. All that good stuff. 
And now I'm working on a story all about that. Using these amazing people as characters, using this amazing story as inspiration. It's not a re-telling nor is it a novelization. It isn't allegory. I don't know how to explain it. It's kind of its own thing, but it would be nowhere without the Bible.

Unnamed (yes that's its actual name) was inspired by a game called "Off," and a few personal things.

The Experiment was initially inspired by a song.

The Little People of Their Place was inspired by the true story of the girls who "invented" fairies (they didn't actually invent them, but they're credited for it. They're two sisters who basically faked photos and stuff. Long story) as well as the novel The Silver Donkey. 


So once again, anything and everything has the potential to inspire me.

If you could live anywhere, where would it be?

Like Mattie, I will say the mountains. Mountains or tucked away in Ireland's countryside, surrounded by trees and possibly a marsh not too far away. Basically somewhere green and cool with privacy, away from roads and man-made noises, and somewhere that I can keep a garden. Preferably in a cabin or cottage.




Are you an introvert or an extrovert?

I dislike these terms as people use them for their identities, which is silly. But I am indeed an introvert; I introspect and gain energy from time apart from people via reading, creating, and praying. 
As all introverts are required to say (similarly to how all extroverts are required to say they do like time to themselves), I do love people and quite enjoy spending time with them. I also often "borrow" the energy of other people (an interesting survival tactic that comes naturally to quite a few people), but have a warm up period and can grow tired fairly easily depending on the time of social interaction I am having.

If you had a warning label, what would yours say?

I do not know. I live with me 24/7,  you see, and am desensitized to my own ways. Based off of my dear sister Liana's descriptions of me, perhaps something along these lines, "Caution: Appears to be a regular human. Is in fact a goblin. Goblin side will only come out after you have gotten to know the human very well with plenty of face-to-face interaction. To avoid exposure to the goblin tendencies, refrain from becoming close with this creature. Goblin is not inherently dangerous but can behave in spontaneous and occasionally hazardous ways." 




Ye Whom I Tag:

Julia from Julia's Creative Corner

Allie from Of Rainy Days and Stardust Veins

Libby from Thoughts from a Stumbling Saint

Alright my inky friends, that's all for now. I hope you enjoyed the post. If you're a blogger, please feel free to tag yourself and write out your answers on your own website. If you're just a reader but have your own answers you'd like to give, please feel free to do so in the comments below.


Until next time.

- E.P.