Adventures Up North

Hey, guys.  I know I have really been neglecting the blog lately, and I'm so sorry about that.  I got really sick this week, and I'm still trying to lose this cough. 2016 was a really memorable year.  There were a lot of great moments, a few bad ones, and overall this year was unforgettable.  Now I'm more reflective than ever before.  I thought today, seeing as it's New Years Eve, would be a good time to share five highlights from this year that I will always remember. 5.  I recorded a Christmas album!!   In case you missed my blog post about it several weeks ago, I recorded my Christmas album, title All About Christmas.  It was a great project to finish in my senior year of high school. :)  Listen to it here . 4.  I finished my book!!  Back in March, I wrote the last words of my fantasy novel, Into The Desert.  I am SO excited to be almost finished editing it!  I am taking the editing process slow, but the book its...

There won't be a proper blog post today, since it's Christmas Eve. :) Have a wonderful and blessed Christmas, everybody!! :D

Hey guys!! :) So something really rare happened to me on Thursday night...I actually saw a popular movie before most of my other friends!  And so I thought to myself, I don't have a blog topic for this week yet...why not do a movie review? :D So on Thursday night, I chose to go see Rogue One: A Star Wars Story with my Dad and brother.  We went to a local movie theater about a half hour away from our home, and we went to see it in 2D. NOTE:   Even though I will be steering clear of major spoilers, I will be addressing some of the major plot points, as seen in the film's trailers.  If you haven't seen the trailer yet, or have chosen not to watch them to be completely un-spoiled, proceed with caution. Overall rating: ★★★★ ½ Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is set in the time period between the Star Wars Rebels TV series and the original Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope film.  For the first time in a Star Wars film, we have a female main protagonist, Jin Arso....

Guess what?  I finished my Christmas album!  I'm so SOOOO happy :D I have been working on this album for several long months...and let me tell you, it feel so good to be done! Here's the link where you can listen to my album for free. Sorry this isn't a REAL blog post, but now that this album is done, I will have a lot more free time to catch up with y'all, answer blog comments, and write more and better blog posts.  Stay tuned everyone!! :D

Clothes shopping is amazing.  I'm one of the rare guy shopaholics.  I LOVE to shop, and clothes shopping is no exception.  Just ask my mom. BUT.  I still have a large handful of pet peeves that come with my experiences with clothes shopping.  Furthermore, the things that annoy me are definitely different than girl's problems. I'm gonna need a guest blogger to give that point of view sometime. :) 1.  80% of men's clothes look like plastic grocery bags made of cloth.   It's true.  Most men's jeans are "loose" fit.  Plenty of sweatshirts, jackets, t-shrits, shorts, and others, especially the larger sizes, are extremely baggy and don't fit my body type at all.  Which is VERY frustrating. 2.  The amount of men's clothes in the store, as compared to women's.   It isn't 49% of the store.  Nope, not even close.  I always expect there to be a lot more women's clothes no matter what.  I mean, women own more clothes a...

Note: I'm very busy with Christmas stuff, school, church, and a million other things.  Even NaNoWriMo has gotten pushed to the sideline.  So this will be a quick, last-minute blog post.  Hopefully I can have something a little more substantial for you next week! Okay, everyone, I am completely straying from my usual writing-based posts, and tackling a completely unrelated topic: friendships. Now, if you didn't already know this, friendships are very important.  Very important.  I'm a very social person, and I really need to have relationships with people I enjoy and get along with. The tips I am about to give are not for how to make new friends.  These tips should be used once you know the person a little bit, but aren't close in any way. 1.  Be open, be honest, be vulnerable.   In relationships, honesty is SO IMPORTANT.  Be vulnerable to your friends, let them see your faults and your weaknesses.  Because it's actually strong of...

I'm so excited because I got nominated by the amazing Benita J. Prins .  I love her blog, it's a lot about LOtR, which is reason enough for you to follow her. =)  Go check out her blog, everyone, and thanks, Benita, for this tag!! The rules: –Thank the person who nominated you in a blog post and link back to their blog. –Answer the 11 questions sent by the person who nominated you. –Nominate 11 new blogs to receive the award and write them 11 new questions. –List the rules and display the Sunshine Blogger Award logo in your post and/or on your blog. Benita asked me these questions: 1. Who is your favourite actor/actress and why?   Oh, my...I can't choose just one.  Sean Astin, Natalie Portman, Orlando Bloom, Scarlett Johansson, Billie Piper, and David Tennant are a few of my favorites. 2. How many languages do you speak well enough to hold a conversation?   Just one, and that's English.  I do know a bit of Latin, but really, who am I going to...

Hey there guys! My name is Sarah. Luke is one of my oldest friends and always a great encouragement when it comes to writing, so I was thrilled when he asked if I would write a post for his blog! And by thrilled I mean I thought it was really cool… But in the midst of life's craziness, this task kinda got lost in the pile of other things that I need or want to do. Now it's down to the night I have to send it in to Luke. It's now or never. Do I want to write it? Yes! Do I want to write it now? No… It's a Friday night. I want to curl up on a couch and watch a movie and drink hot chocolate. But instead, I need to write a blog post and I haven't even picked a topic. Hmmmm how about “How to write when you don't want to?” That seems applicable. I can't be the only one with this problem. The constant paradox of wanting to write but not wanting to write in that moment… What do you do in that situation? Tip #1: Write SOMETHING. How many articles/blog posts hav...

Not all of us enjoy music when writing.  But some of us don't like absolute silence either.  Sometimes, an ambient sound mixer is exactly what we need. :) Basically, an ambient sound mixer or background noise generator is an online tool that plays an ordinary ambient sound, usually one long track or a few tracks playing together.  You can usually mix these yourself, with simple sliders to adjust the sound volume of each track playing.  I find these sound mixers extremely calming, stress-relieving, and (most importantly) they help me concentrate when writing.  Here's a list of my absolute favorite online ambient sound mixers: #1: Rainy Mood.   Rainy Mood might be the most popular on this list, but in all truthfulness, it's probably my least personal favorite.  This is mainly because I find the sound of a thunderstorm rather depressing, and also rather out-of-place if it's sunny outside.  But this is a very popular and high-quality ambient sound...

NaNoWriMo is, like, three days away. :O Today I will be giving a list of NaNoWriMo terms you ought to know!  This list has is generally organized by most important to least important.  If you've participated in NaNoWriMo before, you're probably already aware of some of these terms.  But hopefully everyone will find something new that they didn't know before! -NaNoWriMo.  Hopefully all the participants know that NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month, and that it takes place in November.  50,000 is the set word count goal.  Some argue over the pronunciation (some still say NaNo"ree"Mo instead of NaNo"rie"Mo).  This is also often shortened to Nano as well. -Camp NaNoWriMo.  This is a program similar to NaNoWriMo, but instead it takes place in the spring or summer months (the last few years, it's been taking place in both April and July).  It's less strict than normal NaNoWriMo in that participants can choose their own word ...

NaNoWriMo is less than two weeks away.  Cue panicky GIF: So for those of you who don't know, NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month.  NaNoWriMo takes place in November, in which around half a million people around the world attempt to write a 50,000 word novel in the 30 days of November.   To find out more, visit NaNoWriMo's About page. (Someone count how many times I say 'NaNoWriMo' in this post. :P ) Surviving NaNoWriMo is no easy task.  Believe me, I've participated since 2012 (and never been very effective at it either...the best I've ever done was last year with 30,000 words).  In order to stay alive this month, a Survival Kit is necessary.  Naturally, since each writer is different, each writer's kit will be different, too.  But these are that things I need to survive this November: 1.  Computer.  Now, technically speaking, I don't have my own computer, but our family's laptop is barely ever used by anyone else,...

Guess what, guys?  Season 2 is only a month away! Oh, sorry, did I confuse you?  That's right, I probably haven't told you my plans yet...well let's get started so you're no longer in the dark! Alright, so for those of you who don't know, I started this blog back in the middle of July (this is the 13th blog post).  For the most part, it's been about writing, but I've also talked about a few other things as well. And I hope you know by now that I'm posting  every Saturday .  I try to post in the  mornings  on Saturday, roughly  between 8:00 and 9:00 AM (that's Central Time , by the way). The 1st Saturday of the month  is Blogger's Choice.  This is where I can blog about whatever I feel like, whether it's writing related or not. The 2nd Saturday of the month is Guest Week.  This is where another blogger or writer writes an awesome post for me!  Just to make sure you don't get tired of me ;) About once ever four mo...

     My name is Rebekah   and Luke asked me to be a guest blogger. Now a few things you should know about me is I procrastinate. Like a lot. I only dabble in writing. My problem is I end up with a ton of ideas, but no idea how to begin or carry on. I know it's good to have an outline, character details, et cetera. But Writing may not be my thing. However something that is, is music and movies. Ask me something about Sherlock or Marvel, and I can most probably tell you all the facts, and fan theories about that subject. So I'm a bit of a nerd when it comes to stuff like that.       But that isn't what I want to talk about. I want to talk about words. Words can be used to inspire. While many of you write, or just dabble at writing, it can be the spoken words which have more of an influence on people.  It's also the unspoken words that can cause an influence. It is because of this that we must be careful of what we say and write. As you put...

Hi guys, happy Saturday! :D So I was having a pretty rotten Wednesday earlier this week, and then I got this Twitter notification from the awesome Katelyn Buxton , saying she tagged me in this Q&A Tag I've been seeing around.  Yay!  Thanks, Katelyn, for saving my Wednesday.  Katelyn has become one of my new favorite Tweeps over the last week, and her blog is incredible as well.  Check her out, right away.  Don't make me use a Jedi mind trick. Alright, so this is the Q&A Tag!  Rules: -Tag the Blogger(s) who have nominated you -Answer the questions you were given -Nominate 10 bloggers -Write out your 10 questions -Let them know they’ve been tagged So let's get started! :) 1.  Coffee or tea? Tea.  Coffee is fine, some of the time, but tea is just more likely to suit my mood more often.  Especially vanilla chai tea, or iced tea. :) 2.  If you could only listen to one album of music for the rest of your life, what wou...

The 21st Century is amazing in a lot of ways.  We have medicine and other medical technologies that help us remain healthy.  We have electronics that help us stay closer connected.  We've made our own culture, the likes of which the world has never seen before.  And we have Twitter.  Twitter is definitely the best part of the 21st Century. While many aspects of life now are much better, one of the hardest things about living in the modern age is the difficulty to connect to the past.  Even 100 years ago, culture was far closer to the ancient cultures of Rome and England, China and Egypt, to name a few.  In other words, our culture is so different from those we learn about in History class that it becomes hard to relate to them and envision them. This is especially difficult for writers because unlike  commoners  non-writers, many of us write historically-based works.  Some of us write about specific moments in history, like durin...

I was REALLY hoping to get tagged in this.  And then Hannah Heath tagged me in it. Go follow her right now.  Stop right there...no, no, I said stop!  Now, go click on the link, I know you can see it, and FOLLOW HER.  You will follow Hannah Heath.  This is a Jedi mind trick. Thank you, Hannah, for tagging me, I very much appreciate it. You're amazing. :)  You can also click here to see Hannah's post for this tag. Alright, let's get down to business.  So as you already know from the title, this is the Six Question Character Challenge.  But you probably don't know anything about my actual novel.  Which isn't good.  So let me introduce you to my story! My novel's working title is The Dragon Stone War .  This is a series title, actually, since I'm planning to make this story into a series.  So far, I've only been working on the first book and a bit on the second.  Anyway, the REAL title of my first book (the working t...