My Baffling Brain

A big thank you to L. G. Keltner over at Writing Off the Edge for bestowing me with the Reader Appreciation Award! Her blog is one of my favourites, so it's nice to receive awards from her :) Here are the rules: - Identify and show appreciation to the blogger who nominated you. - Add the reward logo to your blog. - Tell your readers seven things about yourself. - Nominate 5-10 of your favorite bloggers for this award. - Inform your nominees you nominated them. It's getting harder and harder to find things about myself to share with you, but I'll try my best! Here goes: 1. I played badminton last week at Centerparcs, and found to my surprise that I'm actually quite good at it. I'm usually terrible at most sports, so it was nice to succeed in something for a change! I might play it more often.  2. There's a possibility that I have an ingrown toenail, and I'm freaking out about it quite a lot. It doesn...

Back to business with my blog schedule, and I'm starting the week off with a review of the book I finished last week, Anna Dressed in Blood by Kendare Blake. Just your average boy-meets-girl, girl-kills-people story... Cas Lowood has inherited an unusual vocation: He kills the dead.  So did his father before him, until his gruesome murder by a ghost he sought to kill. Now, armed with his father’s mysterious and deadly athame, Cas travels the country with his kitchen-witch mother and their spirit-sniffing cat. Together they follow legends and local lore, trying to keep up with the murderous dead—keeping pesky things like the future and friends at bay. When they arrive in a new town in search of a ghost the locals call Anna Dressed in Blood, Cas doesn’t expect anything outside of the ordinary: move, hunt, kill. What he finds instead is a girl entangled in curses and rage, a ghost like he’s never faced before. She still wears the dress she wore on the day of her brut...

I got back from Centerparcs yesterday, and I had such a great time! It would have been a little nicer if the weather was better; it was really cold right from the first day, and we (my mum, sister and I) didn't really pack for cold weather! I think we were hoping it would be warm. Still, it was a lovely holiday regardless, and there was plenty to do to warm us up. It was also nice to get to our villa on an evening, put the heating on and have a hot chocolate, with lots of cream and marshmallows! We spent the majority of our time in the Subtropical Swimming Paradise, going down the slides and the river rapids, and trying not to drown when the waves came on; they were huge! We hired bikes, which was a lot of fun since none of us had ridden one in years! It was very hard going up all of the many hills and slopes of Centerparcs on them, but much easier whizzing back down them, I had forgotten how much fun bike riding could be. This guy kept coming back for more, banging his beak ...

For my last post before my week away in Centerparcs, I thought I'd put up my story for Jessa Russo's  Ghosts (and the girls who love them) Blog Hop! The objective was to write a piece of flash fiction between 300-1000 words long, with the theme of ghostly paranormal romance. Here's my entry: He found her sat in the chair in the corner of their bedroom, rocking back and forth, clearly struggling to hold back tears. The bed in the centre of the room was rumpled and unmade, which was unlike her; the first thing she usually did when she got up was make the bed. There were clothes littering the floor, mainly his; she had always told him off for his scruffiness. It unnerved him to see the room looking so messy, she was usually such a clean-freak. He hovered in the doorway. He had been told that she wouldn’t be able to see him from now on; occasionally she may hear the creak of a floorboard as he moved over it, or feel the coolness in the air whenever he was around, but t...

First of all, sorry for the lack of posting yesterday, but it's mainly because of the letter I got, and all the stuff I had to sort out because of it. So, those of you who regularly read my blog might know that I recently applied (very last minute!) for a Creative Writing Masters Degree - well, I got a conditional offer! As long as they get two references (one of which they received on Tuesday, the other they will be getting on Monday) I'll be starting straight after Centerparcs! I was so excited when I opened the letter yesterday, I honestly thought it would be a rejection! I think after two failed attempts at getting on the PGCE, I just thought I wasn't good enough to get into university for a follow on degree. So imagine my surprise when I opened the letter and it was a yes! Now I just need to sort out funding (which is going to be fun) meaning that I have to send an application out for a Career Development Loan, since I certainly can't afford to pay for the de...

So, I have yet to finish the book I'm reading so I won't be reviewing it today. Instead, I've decided to participate in a blogfest that I've seen floating around the blogosphere today, the What's Your Chocolate? Blogfest. All I have to do is: "Post about your favourite chocolate – what it means to you, where and when you indulge, a favourite memory – anything chocolate-related." Taken from here Cadbury chocolate is my usual go-to chocolate whenever I fancy some; I love Twirl bars and Caramel Dairy Milks, yum! I also love Creme Eggs in Easter. Taken from here Terry's Chocolate Orange has to go on my list; I don't have it very often, but when I do I'm in Heaven! Whoever thought of putting chocolate and orange together was a genius. Taken from here If I want a bit of a treat I'll buy myself a bar of dark chocolate (I like Lindt 85%, just finished off a bar last night, it was delicious!) Taken from here As a gift, I lo...

I've been tagged in the Next Big Thing award by Laura from Stranger Than Writing , thanks Laura! Please check out her awesome blog :) This award involves answering questions about my latest project, so I guess I'll use my Camp NaNo novel! What is the working title of your book?  I actually don't have one; it's been "Untitled" since I first started planning it! I'm really going to have to sit down and think of one, but it's very hard! I'm hoping eventually an awesome idea will just come to me. Where did the idea come from?  The original idea was completely different, I don't fully remember where it came from, but eventually it just morphed into the story I have now! I think I just thought that it would be interesting if I had characters who could control elements (elementalists) and then I started exploring what powers they would have, and then fit their world around them. What genre does your book fall under?  At the minute fantas...

Time for my monthly goal post again, August went so quickly! The air's starting to get a little cooler here, which I am immensely relieved about; I'm fed up of being too hot! I think I did pretty well on last months goals, which you can find here. Last month's goals: 1. Get more overtime ; I tried to get more overtime, but we've not been busy at all at work recently, and I spent most of August rushing home to write for Camp NaNo! It's getting much busier now though, and I already have myself down for extra overtime, which is going to kill me but hopefully it'll be worth it! 2. Finish Camp NaNo - check! I succeeded in writing 50000 words by the end of August, and I'm very proud of that achievement! 3. Writing my entry for the What if? Fairytale Blogfest - I did this in time for the deadline, and you can find my entry here. 4. Read more books - I read another couple from my unread pile, which is good. I only have about 5 more in my unread pile now, ...

I was really looking forward to reading this book, mainly because of the awesome front cover! I also liked the idea of the story, so when I actually read it I was a little disappointed by it. It wasn't as good as I was expecting, and I had no interest in reading it at all; the only reason I finished it was because I don't like leaving books half unread. I would give this book 2 stars; I don't think I'll be getting the sequels. From Goodreads The year is 2009.  Nineteen-year-old Jackson Meyer is a normal guy… he’s in college, has a girlfriend… and he can travel back through time. But it’s not like the movies – nothing changes in the present after his jumps, there’s no space-time continuum issues or broken flux capacitors – it’s just harmless fun. That is… until the day strangers burst in on Jackson and his girlfriend, Holly, and during a struggle with Jackson, Holly is fatally shot. In his panic, Jackson jumps back two years to 2007, but this is not like hi...