Tuesday Tales: Brodie and Andyrsn Take Over!

*This post occurred before I changed the WIP title and Ghuli's name to Jonnie*



A couple of months ago now, I put out a call for questions for the characters in my WIP The Crystal Bearer. Alex J. Cavanaugh, sensei, asked my characters: Here's a question that I saw a couple years ago and it really helped. Applies to all of them. What do you think of the other characters?

I can't thank him enough for asking. It saved me from thinking too hard for the past few weeks. haha

As it's the end of the month, I would like to start the next month with a new question, so I'm going to go ahead and force Brodie to endure Andyrsn long enough for them to share the same space.

First, I would like to point out that I disagree with the space sharing.
You're such a brat, Brodie. Just answer the question.

B: Hello, Alex. I have been asked to inform you that your name in the Sprityn tongue is Alxadris, pronounced Al-shah-dris, which means strong fighter. We spell your name differently here.

A: It was also my dad's name. Weird to see it spelled the way you do, but cool.

B: I met Ghuli under strange circumstances, but it has turned out for the best for both of us, I believe. She is being hit with a lot at the moment, so I have seen her at some of her highest points and some of her lowest. She is always thinking, and if she gets too deeply into her thoughts, it is hard to pull her back. She is unpredictable at times, but she is a teenager.

A: You will notice how Brodie always speaks as though she is older than Teorre's Energy.

B: Shut. Up.

A: Seriously, though, Ghuli is almost as proper, but she was raised by my dad, so she has a little Viveno Island spunk. It's kinda weird to see the many influences from her world and mine blended into each other. She's really serious sometimes, but other times, she is light and easily excitable. Her laugh is priceless. She appreciates good humor.

B: Does she.

A: Silence, Human.

B: Cyan is...well, he's a Trollic. Fortunately not a typical one, because he was also raised by Sir Aleksandyr, so some good came of that.

A: Thanks?

B: He is very protective of Ghuli, a detriment as much as it is an advantage. He's extremely stubborn and disagreeable.

A: Sounds familiar. Cyan's a watchman's watchman. He's focused solely on Ghuli's safety, so there's really no arguing with him about it. He's really intense, kinda scary, but I think he means well.

B: At any rate, we finally met Prince Laris. I never thought I would leave Eastward Village, let alone meet the Sprityn Prince. He is so nice. He always has an uplifting view on things.

A: I do like Laris. He's really cool. And he knows a lot of different variations of card games, which is good when you're traveling and Cyan has not a word to say.

B: Andyrsn cannot handle silence.

A: No, I can't. Brodie and I grew up together, and she knows my family is loud. It proves we're alive.

B: You keep telling yourself that. To be fair for a moment, Andyrsn is a very good person. He is a pest, and he loves to pull pranks. However, he is a strong fighter, and he is resilient. I enjoyed training along side of him.

A: Wow...Thanks, Brodie. See? She can be very nice when she wants to be.

B: And the moment is over.

A: No, but really. Brodie's the youngest in her family, like me, and she's got a lot to live up to which, putting it bluntly, sucks pricklebushes. As a scholar, I mean, she's probably the best because she's naturally smart, but as a watchman? Watch. Out.

B: You just had to make a pun.

A: I couldn't help it. Sorry. But seriously, she's an awesome fighter. I've never been more exhausted from sparring with any of our other co-trainees. I still know some guys who are scared of you.

B: Well, they should be.

A: Here we go.

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*giggle* Thanks again, Alex!

Liebster Award, Answers, Questions, and Nominees


I was nominated for a Liebster Award by Cover Girl Dani Bertrand at Entertaining Interests! Thank you, Dani! I shall accept!

It's been two years since my last nom, and I have no recollection of the rules, except for EIGHT MILLION QUESTIONS! Here are the rules. lol

If you have been nominated for The Liebster Award and you chose to accept it, write a blog post about the Liebster Award in which you:
  • Thank the person who nominated you, and post a link to their blog in your post.
  • Display the award on your blog — by including it in your post and/or displaying it using a “widget” or a “gadget”.
  • Answer 11 questions about yourself, which will be provided to you by the person who nominated you.
  • Provide 11 random facts about yourself.
  • Nominate 5 – 11 blogs that you feel deserve the award, who have a less than 1000 followers.
  • Create a new list of 11 questions for the nominees to answer
List these rules in your post (copy and paste from here). Once you have written and published it, you then have to:
  • Inform the people/blogs that you nominated that they have been nominated for the Liebster Award and provide a link for them to your post so that they can learn about it (they might not have ever heard of it!)
All right, here I go!

What God or Deity from Mythology (Greek, Norse, etc) do you think represents you the best? I don't know if she represents me best, but I've always had a love for Artemis.

Which book character would you want to be? Winry from Fullmetal Alchemist! She gets Ed in the end. <3

If you were to survive on your own in the wilderness, what ONE tool/weapon would you pick? A spear. I need a weapon that I won't be prone to accidentally cut myself with.

What would your Superhero name be? The Red Avenger

What was your first concert? Technically, it was a Yahoo-Telecasted Backstreet Boys concert, but I think Fourth of July on the Parkway was my first one where I was physically there.

How would you describe yourself in one word? Crazy

Name something from history which you would love to discover, explore or recover. I would love to see the Mayan and Aztec structures before they were just ruins.

Which era would you like to experience? Maybe the Roaring 20s. That might be the safest...?

If you were to be reincarnated as an animal, which would you choose? My first reaction was a turtle, so...turtle. lol

Is there a movie you would like to give an alternate ending to? What ending do you have in mind and why? There were many books I read in high school that were jacked up by Hollywood, so I would just like The Good Earth, Fahrenheit 451, and A Clockwork Orange to follow the endings they had in the books.

Name one thing you'd like to improve on. Focus.

Oh, that was 11! Those were easy. Now, who shall I nominate...

Sarah Foster at The Faux Fountain Pen
Madeline Mora-Summonte at The Shellshank Redemption
Elsie Amata at Mock Turtle Musings
The KOOPMAN! at Vignettes from VA
SC Author (welcome back!) at Writing, Publishing, & Harry Potter

Now, what to ask you...

Did you have a non-writing ambition as a child (Like wanting to be a firefighter)?

What one thing would you take with you on the emergency space craft if the earth were to blow up right now?

Think of a word, and post it!

Name a time where you felt like you were on Cloud 9.

Star Wars or Star Trek?

What is your most treasured keepsake?

Who is your favorite book character and why?

Who is your favorite movie character and why?

What has been your favorite book to movie adaptation? If you don't like any, who did the worst job?

Research might be needed: What is your state flower?

What has been your favorite vacation spot?

Fast Five Friday


Geez, when did I last do one of these!? Fast Five is brought to us by the Cover GirlsDani and Jax. They provide us with questions that we answer in rapid succession, and I've missed a couple of these, so you get a ten answers today. :)


May 13th - 5 fun things to do with your bestie

Watch movie marathons
Go to a restaurant
Cruise
Hit the beach
Drink (lol)


May 20th – 5 ways to get yourself motivated

Pump yourself up
Listen to music that gets you going
Watch other people who you admire
Dance break
Keep focused

Tuesday Tales: Laris Takes Over!


We are at the midpoint of my characters answering Alex J. Cavanaugh Sensei's question of what they each think of each other. Today, we get to see what Prince Laris of the Sprites, 2nd Lt. Watchman to Ghuli, thinks of her and his counterparts. Take it away, Laris!

     
Certainly!
'Tis a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Sir Alex Cavanaugh.

The Princess, I believe, could have been a Sprite in another lifetime. She is very charming. She remains a child at heart. You have not seen pure joy until you have seen my lady swinging from the blue willow trees in the forest. Though Ghulien* has lost much in her young life, she continues to shine and thrive, making the most of her situation. I feel quite blessed to have been assigned to her.

I am told Cyan was not the most open of interviewees, and I apologize. Have you heard a saying of one being a tough nut to crack? That is Cyan. I believe he has always felt that he must be, howbeit. I try, to no avail, to loosen him at times. My Sprityn humor falls flat on his Trollic ears, which is to be expected. At any rate, he secretly has a big heart. You see it most when he is with the Princess...when she is not the cause of his grief in the first place.

Scholars have always intrigued me, and Madam Brodie is indeed intriguing. She is a very intelligent young lady, and quite focused for her age. I enjoy speaking with her. She intimidates many of her peers. Howbeit, she is of a kind heart, gentle and considerate. Although, I would not want to anger her. She is fierce with a rifle.

Sir Andyrsn also strikes me as being of a Sprityn mind. He has a glint of mischief in his eyes, whether it be sarcasm or a game to pass the time. Howbeit, 'tis clear he wants the best for everyone around him. I enjoy his company. I was fortunate enough to meet his father, Sir Aleksandyr, shortly before he passed. He was a great man, and I believe he would be proud of the man his son has become.

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Two more watchmen to go! Thank you again, Alex, for the question! Brodie is next to answer.

If anyone has more questions to ask my characters, please feel free to post them!



*This post occurred before I changed Ghuli's name to Jonnie*

Final Fantasy Friday: The FFXV Trailer


I didn't want to go another week without posting on Friday! This has been a long, fulfilling week! I hope everyone had a great one.

We're drawing nearer and nearer to the release of Final Fantasy XV, and I'm so excited! I thought I would share the trailer to at least get my Friday posts rolling again. So, enjoy!



Tuesday Tales: Cyan Takes Over!

This is a continuation of answers from my characters to Mr. Alex J. Cavanaugh's question: What do you think of the other characters? Last week, my main character Ghuli* answered. This week, we get to hear from her 1st Lt. Watchman, Cyan.

(She's short, but he's over 7 feet tall.)

I told them I don't have time to answer these questions, but I guess I'll do it, if they'll leave me alone. Humans.

Hello, Sir Alex.

I guess I shall start with Ghuli*. This is something she would do, after all. Ghuli likes to stay busy, which makes her hard to watch at times. Howbeit, I know she does it with the hopes of forgetting her worries for a time. Overall, she means well, I guess.

Laris is a good man. He will be a good king one day. He always has a wise word. He is a great swordsman, though he likes his crossbow more. He tells Ghuli way too many stories. I don't know how he knows so many.

Brodie doesn't seem to like me, which makes for obnoxious times with her. Ghuli likes her, howbeit, so I believe I am stuck with her. I will say she is very smart. She retains a lot of information on both The Scholarship and The Watch. 'Tis the first time we have met a scholar who is also a watchman. She seems the type who would do it.

Andyrsn keeps trying to get me to play cards with him, and it aggravates me. What do they do on Viveno Island all day? I'm not yet sure what to make of him. Half of what he says seems to be sarcastic. I don't know whether I should punch him or not. Ghuli may not appreciate it anyway...but that is just another reason why I want to.

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So, it was a little hard to get a non-Cyan answer from Cyan, but next week, Laris will answer, and he's a little more open. :)

Thanks again, Alex!



*This post occurred before I changed Ghuli's name to Jonnie*

Wednesday Words: The Star of Istanbul



Good morning, and welcome back to Wednesday Words!

This is the day where I share with you all what I am currently reading (or writing). I've been picking up speed on my reading challenge, and hopefully I catch up.

Today, we're looking at one of my favorite authors, Robert Olen Butler, and his second thriller from his Christopher Marlowe Cobb series: The Star of Istanbul.


I read The Hot Country one or two years back now, and the way Prof. Butler can work his words always keeps me interested. Still wish I'd stayed one more semester at FSU to take his class. But oh well. ha

Using Random.org, I will turn to a page and share a line or so with you all. There are 369 pages in this book, and Random chose page 296. I'm not quite there yet, so hopefully not much is given away for me.

Maybe that saved my life. She probably had her pistol in her little bag. Maybe she would have liked to shoot me dead there in the Kubbeli Salon for endangering her plan.

I could see how that plan would seem mortally important, once you'd committed to it.

Love it. I made the common mistake I make of looking further down the page, so I gave away something for myself. Can't wait to get to it, though!

Are you reading anything good?

Tuesday Tales: Ghuli* Takes Over!

*This post occurred before I changed Ghuli's name to Jonnie*


Tuesday Tales have returned!

A few...*looks at the date*...wow...At the end of March, I decided to have my characters answer questions from blog readers, potential readers, anyone who wanted to know a little more about them. (Find that post here.)  I decided last minute not to keep posting here during the A-to-Z Challenge, so after Andyrsn talked to Sarah about his favorite dish to cook, we're back with a question from your sensei and mine, Mr. Alex J. Cavanaugh!


Here's a question that I saw a couple years ago and it really helped. Applies to all of them. What do you think of the other characters?


A great question, Alex, thank you! I will pass it to my main character Ghuli first!







Hello, Sir Alex!

Well, I suppose I should begin with Cyan. I have known him the longest, and he is a brother to me. Many do not know this, but he was picked on as a child for being smaller than the other Trollics--can you believe that?*--so, he is very shy. He can be a bit overbearing; howbeit, he has trained to protect me since he was a little boy. I can only hope he will be able to have a real life one day. He deserves it.

Prince Laris has been a true blessing for us. Without him, I don't believe Cyan and I would have survived Sir Aleksandyr's death. He is very sweet and always has a gentle word, even when Cyan wants to scold me. I love the stories Laris tells. He promised to take me to meet his wife, the Princess Ylana, and his father, the King, one day! He misses them sorely, but he remains a very good watchman.

I have only known Brodie for a short time, but I already love her as I would a sister. She is so smart! I believe, as a scholar, she is also very bored. She joined The Watch a couple of years ago. That is unheard of for a scholar. Howbeit, she is very strong-willed, and I believe The Watch does her good. She has a big heart, though she maintains a tough exterior. I hope we can be friends for a long time.

I have also known Andyrsn for a short time; howbeit, he is very kind. He saved me from drowning and dropped everything to try to get me home. He has a mischievous streak in him--I can see it in his eyes, but he is a good man. He makes me laugh often...Oh, I must stop smiling so much when I speak of him! It annoys Cyan.

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*Cyan is a little over 7 feet tall, still short for a Trollic, but scary tall even for the Humans of Teorre. Next week, we will hear what he has to say about Ghuli and his fellow watchmen!

A to Z Challenge Reflections Post

Click Here to Visit the A to Z Challenge Website!

Congratulations on finishing the A to Z Challenge this year, people!

If you would like to visit my A-to-Z Blog and learn about Final Fantasy and/or analyze my obsession with Final Fantasy, click here to begin at A!

As many know, I do my April posts on another blog. It's a neurosis I have about my posts accurately reflecting my normal schedule. Unfortunately, many thought I wasn't participating, so I had many an edit on my post that said I was on break, so that people knew I was in fact participating! That's my fault.

Despite other setbacks I had in April, I am so glad I started scheduling my posts months in advance. I had a lot of time to look over them, add to them, detract from them, fix things, etc. And I'm glad a few readers rekindled their love of Final Fantasy.

This year, I had decided to read all of the gaming challengers' posts (GA). Unfortunately, all of the ones I started to read were about Dungeons and Dragons or other tabletop RPG games. So by the sixth one, I got bored with them and gave up.

There are a few I plan to return to so I can finish reading their A to Z posts, such as The Halls of the Nephilim, where the drinks of D&D were highlighted, and The Sea of Stars, which I wasn't sure about what exactly it was, but I knew there was world building happening and was really interested, and The Word of Stelios, where the life and aspects of a tabletop gamer were highlighted, which interested me as someone who only hears about D&D through cartoons, movies, and occasionally Vin Diesel (yes, he is a Dungeon Master).

Some, like the author of The Word of Stelios, were kind enough to post a list of other gamers on the challenge (they even mentioned me, yay!), so perhaps I will find another VIDEO gamer in that group. Kudos to those who are just social enough to sit with other people and play tabletop games with them, though. It would take me a whole day just to set up my character and backstory.

After giving up on the (GA) tag, I moved onto the entertainment tag for a moment (ET) and found some cool blogs about music and one about Star Trek (I don't remember how I got there, actually). I also found a great one highlighting God from A to Z! So for the next few weeks, I will be finishing the blogs I started and maybe even branching out to read some more of them!

If you visited my blog last month and stopped by my A to Z Blog, thank you so much! :-D

(THIS IS MY 500TH POST!!)

Final Fantasy Friday: Countdown to FFXV!


Happy Friday!

It's quite dreary where I am, but nothing can give me more life that the fmv backdrop of the FFXV Website!


I'm sitting at my desk fangirling so hard inside. On that backdrop you can see the summon Leviathan, the amazing graphics for the summon Titan, a behemoth, and an iron giant (my favorite FF monster of all time)! You also get to see the prince and his men just being guys at a pinball game, which will be the first Final Fantasy game within a game that you will be able to play outside of the game! And I absolutely love pinball computer games, so I am HERE. FOR. IT!

Visit the media to see all the cool features of this game. I will be saving up to get a PS4 so I can play this game! I must continue my habit! lol

I'm going to watch it again. You guys have a great weekend, and a Happy Mother's Day! :-D

Insecure Writers Support Group - April Showered!

Brought to us by Alex J. Cavanaugh,
sensei and founder of the Insecure Writer's Support Group.



To say I had quite an April would be putting it...quite mildly. This is going to be a longer post than I like, so I'm sorry in advance.

Let's start back in October, when the administrative assistant for the Chief Security Officer at my job moved onto another company. I had been eyeing her job for quite some time and took the opportunity to express my interest in her position to my manager (who told me when I joined to look around and see what might interest me because I'm currently in a Casual/Seasonal position, and she worried that I was over-qualified to work for her team), and the CSO. So, the CSO told me she had spoken to my manager about needing my help, and my spirits went way up.

After meeting with her, they returned to earth. She had plans to close the Administrative Assistant position and create a new one for a Security Administrator. So for the past few months, I've been helping her team as they did eventually close the job I wanted, and I started applying, yet again, to jobs elsewhere.

In those months, I also spent a lot of time preparing my posts for the A to Z Challenge. I had decided last year that I would focus on Final Fantasy, as the Write Mage, so I did a lot of research and picture searching, and gif searching, and started scheduling those posts. My excitement for each post mounted and mounted, and eventually (if you saw), I even had multiple characters per post and honorable mentions because I couldn't decide, and I just knew I'd draw people into my excitement once I started going around to the others' posts.

April 1st gets here, and I can't wait to get home and start reading blogs. I took a break to go say happy birthday to my surrogate great-grandmother, and when I get into the house and hug my surrogate pop-pop, he says, "You know Pastor died?"

And then most of my April was basically pre-scheduled to not go the way I wanted. Our Pastor had been such for almost 35 years. I was on the committee for this 35th anniversary. His 34th would have been the week after we had his funeral. So a lot of people--our church and surrounding communities--are still shaken up, and when you have a man who not only takes care of his church but pulls together other churches to serve the community for 34 years, we're rightfully so.

But trying to get anything else done got pretty difficult. I have library books that need to keep getting renewed, I'm now 4 books behind on my Goodreads schedule, and I now have to catch up on reading the A to Z Blog posts I'd started. I know I can still do them, but still.

On the bright side, my April didn't end too badly. I kept applying, as I said, to other jobs, many at the local hospital, and at the end of March, I was finally granted an interview. Then, I moved onto the next interview. And then, I was offered the job! SO May begins my countdown (12 DAYS) to becoming a full-time administrative assistant! I'm extremely excited, and I can't wait to move onto bigger and better things!

So, April was a roller coaster, but I'm still strapped in for the ride. :)

Happy May!

(LOL)

Now that the A to Z Challenge is done, I am back with my regularly scheduled posts. The first (pretend like this isn't one) will be my Insecure Writers Support Group Post this Wednesday! Good to see everyone! If you took the Challenge, how did you do?