Hello! How are all my lovelies doing?
As you may have noticed, sick I’ve been very…underground the past few weeks. I had some free time last week and wrote a TON of book reviews and sort of prescheduled them, web so while my blog has been full of reviews, treat I haven’t actually been working on it for awhile. I’ve been massively behind on Monday Missions, and Tuesday Top Tens and I’m SO behind on Weekly Round-Ups.
And I apologize massively for that!
Last time I was this neglecting to my blog was when I was finishing up the first draft of my science fiction romance-ish novel, The Awakened. So it goes mostly without saying that this second bout of neglect comes from the fact that I was rushing to finish the second draft in order to get it out to my beta readers.
I’m going to pause here for a moment and give a shoutout to my beta readers: Jackie C, Jackie Z, Ashley, Marlee, Alex, Taylor, Lindsey and Kameron: I love you all already and I can’t wait to hear what you have to say about my book!
Also a massive shoutout to my cousin, Gina, who has been helping my to edit the little bugger.
But other than that, I’ve just been SO massively busy. The last even I even blogged about on here was James Dashner at the end of July. I’ve been doing all kinds of amazing things since then, keeping busy.
First off, I saw one of my absolute favorite bands, Set It Off, again. They BLEW my mind, once again, and I loved being able to hang out with them.
Some of you may know that Set It Off was a new discovery back in October of 2013. Not that long ago. They opened up for one of my favorite bands, Story of the Year, and they played their song “Dream Catcher”, and Cody (below) talked about living your dreams, not listening to people bringing you down, and all of that. The night, I went home and started The Awakened and not even a year later, I’ve finished it (TWO drafts), have sent it on to beta readers and am starting to query agents. WHAT. So I talked to Cody, told him how inspiring he is, and basically cried in front of him. Then I had all the boys in the band write my favorite lyric of theirs and hopefully that’ll be a tattoo soon!
I also discovered a “new” band (new to me) called One Last Night. I’ve been listening to them ever since, and I”m just in love with their songs “Same Old War” and “Sunrise”.
The next day after that, my friends and I headed down to the beach for an all day fangirl beach day. We relaxed, read, played in the ocean and took a TON of pictures. Then we spent the evening, roasting marshmallows over the bonfire and literally talking about books for hours and hours. I LOVE that so much.
The day after fangirl beach day, my friends and I headed to the Barnes and Noble in Glendale at the Americana to meet Gayle Forman, the author of If I Stay and other amazing books, and RJ Cutler, the director of the If I Stay movie. I had a great time meeting the two of them, and Gayle’s parents, who were in attendance but I honestly don’t think that I’ll be going back to that location again. I sent an email into corporate, which I hardly ever do, because I usually have an amazing time at events. This one, however, was massively unorganized and most of the people working the event were insanely rude, and I just was so frustrated by the end of the night that I wanted to go home. Later this week, I’ll be heading to the If I Stay premiere so hopefully that’ll work out better haha!
Just a few days ago, I went to another concert (I’m so musical, all of a sudden haha). Paramore and Fall Out Boy were touring together, and that was just awesome. I hadn’t seen Paramore since Warped Tour…2006? 2007? Basically, a really long time ago. And Fall Out Boy is an ABSOLUTE favorite of mine. It was cool too because my friend Jade snuck me up front with her (my seat was pretty far away haha), and I ended up SO close for the FOB set and it was just PERFECT.
Yesterday was one of my fangirl bestie’s birthday. She turned 16 and had a fangirl birthday party. It was so much fun and we basically hung out, pigged out on delicious food, talked books and took hilarious pictures. I’ll share those once they are up on FB.
Now today, I’m getting back into blogging, outlining the sequel to The Awakened, and hoping to catch up on my reading. The last book I read was Opposition when it came out and that was nearly two weeks ago. I’m in a major slump, but hopefully with the break in writing, I can focus on reading again. I have SO many books in my TBR and I need to get to them ASAP.
I also started a new Instagram and Twitter today, focused completely on ME. They are my personal, author accounts, focused on my journey to become a writer. What A Nerd Girl Says will remain for my book loving and my blog life but hopefully I’ll be able to share all the fun of me, my writing, my novel and hopefully my life as a published (!!) author. I would love if all of you followed me on my new accounts below!
Until next time, my loves! I will hopefully be blogging more!
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