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EmmaMaree.com

Scottish Writer of Fantasy & Sci-Fi

life

Frosty February Highlights

February was a messy month, but there were plenty of highlights to share:

  • Watched the Roller Derby World Cup with friends! It was an amazing time and such a great experience to watch the matches live with derby friends, my teammates, and derby Twitter. I’m still gutted I couldn’t be there in person in Manchester, but being part of the livestream was amazing fun.
  • Visited Dundee for my buddy Theo’s housewarming, and got to experience the delights of Dundee (24 hour bakery! Rainbow bagels! Adorable cafes!), test my driving ability on a motorway for the first time ever (super enjoyable!), and we had a chance to visit the amazing Camperdown Wildlife Park. Here’s me making friends with a gibbon.

  • Got back into spin cycling regularly. Yay spinning.
  • PANCAKE DAY! Dave made awesome crepes and I tried out a recipe for a Dutch Baby pancake for the first time.

  • Finished a great audiobook, Queen of Shadows.
  • Took a nice long walk down the Dava Way on a beautiful, if blimmin’ cold, winter’s day.
  • Tried skating in two different new halls, including with a few hours with the Inverness team of skaters which was a fun experience!
  • Got much stronger at my sticky-skating and ploughstops.
  • Got my new derby kit.

A few challenging things happened this month, too. My derby kit arrived with severe issues, which has been causing me a lot of hassle and holding back my practice. My skating progress went backwards in a lot of areas as I adjusted to the new kit. My writing wasn’t moving forward, my weight loss wasn’t progressing at the weight I wanted, and I was getting frustrated as heck with my lack of forward momentum.

Then the month ended with an unexpected close family funeral, and I had to travel through the snowstorm to be with my family and then get across to the Western Isles. Oooftttt.

In the midst of the funeral prep, I fell sick with norovirus.

Just. Oooftttt.

So, aye, hell of a month. It left me feeling pretty beat-up and run-down, which makes a lot of sense considering… y’know, everything. But March is already on the up-and-up, so let’s keep going!

For March, I’m going to concentrate on resting and recovering from this before heading onwards to the next challenge. Gotta be kind to myself and allow that recovery.

What’s Up Thursday

What’s Up Wednesday is a weekly meme geared toward readers and writers, allowing us to touch base with blog friends and let them know what’s up. It was created by created by Jaime and Erin. Want to join the party? Go right ahead, and remember to leave a link to your What’s Up Wednesday post in the widget on Jaime´s blog.

Wonder why this post is late up? Well…

 

What I’m Reading

Oh my gosh, you guys, it’s been ages since I did a What’s Up Wednesday and I’ve missed my chance to tell you about SO MANY BOOKS. And now I’m posting this on Thursday so I’m still failing terribly.

I promised to fangirl at you when I’d finished J.B. Rockwell’s BREAKSHIELD, a book of adorable foxes and lots of fun fight scenes. So here I am, to remind you that it’s BRILLIANT. Highly recommended to fans of traditional epic fantasy stories.

foxbounce

What does the fox say? The fox says GO READ BREAKSHIELD.

I also read EARTH GIRL by Janet Edwards, a really great YA sci-fi story, THE WENDIGO by Algernon Blackwood, which is now one of my favorite classic horror stories and it’s completely free to read, and RIDER (THE ART OF FORGETTING #1) by by Joanne Hall, a coming-of-age LGBT dark  fantasy that I hope to review soon.

I also went through a few comics: PLANET HULK, THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN: COMING HOME.

In short, I read a small metric ton of books. I love books.

What I’m Writing

I AM SO CLOSE TO FINISHING THIS WIP

SO CLOSE

THE FINISH LINE IS WITHIN SIGHT

hurdles

What Inspires Me

Sleep deprivation is pretty inspiring.

tired

Apart from that, I’m just keeping up the usual inspiring loop of watching great telly (mostly anime, Free! Eternal Summer, Sailor Moon Crystal, DRAMAtical Murder and Black Butler, but I’m also catching up on Orange is the New Black) and reading great books.

What Else I’ve Been Up To

I finished all my updates about the Zombies Run! 5k training (PART ONE | PART TWO | PART THREE |  PART FOUR) and now I’m into a less structured running plan, running two or three days a week and doing free weights in between.

Apart from that we’re just battling to scrape together a deposit and see about getting a mortgage, which is… stressful.smoking

Hayfever-y Road Trip Wednesday

*SNEEZES MORE THAN ANY HUMAN BEING SHOULD SNEEZE*

sneezingsimba

What’s Up Wednesday is a weekly meme geared toward readers and writers, allowing us to touch base with blog friends and let them know what’s up. It was created by created by Jaime and Erin. Want to join the party? Go right ahead, and remember to leave a link to your What’s Up Wednesday post in the widget on Jaime´s blog.

What I’m Reading

the-snake-charm-cover (1)If you’ve been following my Twitter, where I am infinitely more interesting and witty than here,  you might have seen me fangirlnig about Laura Lam‘s new novella, THE SNAKE CHARM.

Here’s my Amazon review:

Oh, man, I loved this little story. It reads a lot like a smaller scale version of “Pantomime”: a quick read (maybe 2 hours, depending on your reading speed) but with the same twists, turns, atmosphere and fight scenes.

It’s also completely standalone, and if you haven’t read Laura’s “Pantomime” I’d read this first — it adds even more depth to the circus members.

I’m now reading J.B. Rockwell’s BREAKSHIELD, and I’ll fangirl more about that this time next week. But I want you to know that it contains adorable foxes.

foxgif

What I’m Writing

Still revising. In that odd little point of space and time where ideas take shape about of absolutely nowhere, and plot issues seem to just unknot themselves in the moments when I’m doing nothing much at all.

It’s a strange and magical part of the process, though it’s all frustrating as all hell because there’s no way to predict it and no way to speed it up.

What Inspires Me

Procrastination, for all its faults, seems to be inspiring me at the moment. Brain down-time is important.

Also, this comic should strike a chord with all writers:

writingpanel1 writingpanel2

writingpanel3

writingcomic

Source is this artist. (Page autoplays music.)

What Else I’ve Been Up To

On a running break to recover from some minor ailments, and I’m on a driving lesson break while my instructor goes on holiday, so there’s not much to talk about here.

I’ve been posting little dairies of my running training so far, and you can read PART ONE and PART TWO if you’re interested in the foibles of a newbie runner.

Just writing and reading. And sneezing.

Favourite Christmas Songs

While I’m in the Yuletide spirit – I thought I’d share my favourite Christmas song.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCNvZqpa-7Q[/youtube]

And my less-serious other favourite Christmas song:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-Uv8CKYTdQ[/youtube]

(I’m trusting that you’ve all heard my third favourite Christmas song, ‘Fairytale of New York‘, because it’s nearly inescapable with Christmas music playing everywhere at this time of year.)

If you’ve got a particular favourite, drop me a link in the comments. :) I’m off to continue spending my evening with my head in a book…

Internetless

The house move is complete – hooray! The new house is all kinds of wonderful. If you haven’t already been round for a cup of tea and a look round, then you should. Even if you’re outside of Nairn. Even if you’re outside of the UK.

It will be a really good cup of tea, I promise.

The one problem with moving is that internet connections and phone lines aren’t very good at it. (Neither are washing machines, coincidentally.) This means that I am without an internet connection, and my blogging and tweeting and Facebooking and obsessive blog reading are all heavily restricted. My phone is doing its best to use its ‘Wifi Hotspot’ feature to convert 3G into Wifi, and it’s doing a fine but slow job.

So until I’m back online, the blog will be a bit quiet. Never fear – I’ll be back soon.