Madeline Turnipseed - Author

Happy Friday, friends and neighbors. This week my family laid to rest my paternal grandmother.  She was one of the most awesome people I have ever met.  Her house was covered with watercolors and oils and sculptures that she had made.  And they are quality stuff.  Her creativity is something that nurtured mine as I grew up. Today, in her memory, I'm going to share with you guys one of my methods for coming up with and developing stories.  There are a few *spoilers* for stories I haven't told yet, but I'm going to keep all the most exciting ones to myself. :) This is the pickle jar that I keep story ideas in.  For a while it still smelled like Kosher dills every time I opened the lid.  If I breathe really deep when I open it now, the aroma is still faintly present.  I sacrifice a piece of paper every so often to be cut into strips and I keep them on top of the jar so that whenever inspiration strikes, I can write down my idea, fold it up, and throw it in the jar for w

Happy Friday!  This week I finished reading back through my first draft of Om Nom Nombies  and got some feedback from my last alpha reader.  This means I have a game plan for my first ever revision! belldandy105 I guess this is a good time to talk about this novel, since I wasn't blogging when I started writing it.  Initially, my idea for this novel was for a group of prepper-roommates that have been getting ready for the zombie apocalypse (stop shaking your head, this is a thing ) find themselves in the throes of an outbreak.  What I particularly love about this story is the back-and-forth banter that the roommates have.  When you let the nerd voices in your head out, they argue and they quote nerd culture and they make awful (but funny) jokes.  This is probably the only thing this story will have in common with any of my other stories based in our present world.  That, and an ensemble cast rather than a single main character.  Neither The Neif  nor Spitfire  have ensemble ca

Howdy girls and boys!  I do have a review post for you today, but it's not of any of the books I mentioned last week.  I started reading a manga earlier this week at work and I couldn't put it down, so here's my review of Ajin: Demi-Human .  I'll alert you for spoilers. Crunchyroll Right before finals  Crunchyroll updated our subscription so we could read manga as well as watch anime through their site/app.  I was good and waited until this week :)  Their mobile app doesn't have the library available that their site does, but that's okay because it supports this series. The Manga Niche Premise is that a few years back, demi-humans were discovered.  They can't be killed; when they die, they come back to life in a matter of seconds, whole.  Demi-humans are rare and usually hunted down by the media and their friends and family because of a rumor that there's a large reward from the government associated with turning in a demi-human for "

I'm sorry, titles are the worst.  But guess what?!?  I finished my first semester of nursing school with two B's and three A's!  Whoop!  I have the whole month of May to play with my stories!  I can write again!! bentolman I have many plans for this month.  Basically do all the chores and hobbies and good-for-the-soul stuff that I haven't gotten to do since I was in school.  Like read all of these books: The Tropic of Serpents by Marie Brennan , Blood Song by Anthony Ryan , Aisuru by Anma Natsu (I still haven't read the final version!), Without A Summer and Valour and Vanity by Mary Robinette Kowal , The Killing Moon by N. K. Jemisin , Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie , God's War by Kameron Hurley , and The Writer's Guide to Psychology by Carolyn Kaufman .  Funny joke, right? In a month?  These aren't my to-read list that I might get to someday.  These are on my shelf staring at me, wondering why I haven't done anything with them yet.