Today’s post is a bunch of randomness.   My thoughts are all jumbled up, and I don’t even know where to start.

I’ll start with some stuff I’ve been reading and plan to read in the very near future…

1. Book I Recently Finished

The Remnant: The Legend of the Seer: a fantasy for young adults and adults

If you go to Amazon or Barnes and Noble, the ebook is around $3.49.  The paperback is $23.

I met M.J. Chrisman (the author) at the writer’s conference I went to last month and was so impressed with him as a person that I bought his book.  He’s 23 and just starting out with his writing.  He’s a really nice guy, and his story was very enjoyable.  The only problem is that this book is the first one in a trilogy, and he hasn’t finished books 2 and 3 yet.  So while the hero’s decision to continue on the quest to defeat the evil invading the world, we are not given the final battle of good vs. evil.  And while the hero has expressed his feelings for his love interest, the fact that she’s a queen and he’s not royalty poses a possible problem for their sweet romance which started in this book.  (When I say sweet, I mean the characters didn’t have sex.)

Disclaimer: For those of you who like to finish the complete series at once, this might not be the kind of thing you want to read right now.  In the meantime, he’s considering finding a publisher for the books.  So this might or might not remain a self-published series, which could push back the time period for when you could finish the series.  At this point in time, he isn’t ready to release books 2 or 3.  I wanted to mention the disclaimer ahead of time in case you’d rather wait for the whole thing to be out before checking it out.  If reading book 1 and waiting is okay with you and if you’re a fantasy lover, I highly recommend his book.

2.  A children’s series that my son discovered and I found myself enjoying…

The Diary of a Wimpy Kid Series by Jeff Kinney

On Amazon and Barnes and Noble

They made three movies so far off the books, and while I see parts of the books in the movies, the books are not just like the movies, which makes it fun because the movies don’t spoil the books or vice versa.  The reason why I read the books at all was because I wanted to know what my kid was reading.  There are some stuff in children’s books I don’t want my kids reading, so I wanted to make sure it was something I could fully approve of.  And I ended up getting hooked on the series myself.  😀  I am reading the books out of order, but I only have two more books to go and I’m done.

3.  I plan to read a Regency when I finish the Diary of a Wimpy kid series.

This is going to be Christmas Angel by Jo Beverley.

Here’s the link on Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

Before anyone thinks I picked it up because I like the author, that’s not the case.  I have no idea what Jo Beverley writes like, though I’ve seen her name.  The reason I am reading this is because while I was out with a friend yesterday, we came across the book and I thought, “I might be able to write a Regency book that takes place around Christmas.” Since I have no idea how they celebrated Christmas (decorations, games, etc), I figure this book will be research.  I’d rather do research from reading something fun than a dry “how it was done back then” blog post or book.  Most of my research stems from stuff I do find online, but I like to mix it up a bit from time to time.

I Hope to Write Romances that Take Place During the Christmas Season

Now when I say Christmas season, it could start in October and span through the New Year.  For example, I still like the idea for the contemporary Just Good Friends book that starts early November and should take me through New Year’s.  The heroine is in her mid-thirties and her mom is bugging her about not having a boyfriend, so her best friend (the hero) offers to go with her to her younger sister’s wedding.  The hero and heroine agree to act as if they’re dating.  While at the Thanksgiving dinner, the hero gets so annoyed with the mother and sister bugging the heroine about not being engaged that he takes the lie further and says he and the heroine are engaged.  The plan is then to break up, but then after they return to Omaha, her parents come for a surprise visit, making them carry on the lie a bit longer, and the more they continue the lie, the harder it is to be “just friends”.  I want to make a new cover for it since now I can merge two or three pictures onto a cover.

I’d also like to have a Regency take place during the Christmas season, but I haven’t figured out a suitable plot yet.

There is one TV Show I Discovered Recently that I Really Enjoy

While I’m discussing things I enjoy, I thought I’d pass along a creative TV show I recently discovered while browsing Netflix.  Okay.  My husband found it.

The show is called Once Upon a Time.  If  you haven’t heard of it, it’s about fairytale characters who are trapped into our world.  It goes back and forth between their past fairy tale lives and their lives as they are today.  The show features Snow White, Prince Charming, the evil queen, Rumplestiltskin, and Snow White and Prince Charming’s adult daughter Emma.  The queen who was upset when Snow White took the kingdom back from her and married the prince has set a curse on all the fairy tale  characters where they forgot their past lives and live in our world.  Right before the curse took effect, Snow White gave birth to Emma, and the prince put her in a magic wardrobe that took her to our world.  During the curse, time froze for the characters except for Emma who grew up without parents.  On her 28th birthday, she comes to Storybrooke (the town where the characters are trapped).

The show is in its second season, and I like season 2 more than 1, which I didn’t think was possible since I enjoyed season 1 a lot.  What I like about the show is how original it is.  Like I said, it goes back and forth between their past lives and their current lives.  In season 2, it goes into Sleeping Beauty, Mulan, and Captain Hook’s realm, which is in our current time period.  So there are many characters we’re introduced to that stem from the classic fairy tales.  It’s fun to see how their pasts lead to how they are in their current state.  When you understand the background, you get a better picture of their motivation for what they do.  Anyway, it’s something that I haven’t seen done before, and the twists and turns are a lot of fun.

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Anyone got any good books or TV Shows or movies they’ve read or seen recently?