June 2020 | A.S. Akkalon - Fantasy Author

Ten things I learned from Minecraft

Minecraft isn’t just a game, it’s life. You can learn so much from it if you pay attention. And breed enough llamas.

I fell in a Minecraft hole recently. I didn’t know version 1.16 had just come out, that was just a happy surprise.

Love my blue fire.

Yes, I probably lost a good bit of writing time building a new castle, but Minecraft isn’t just a game of digging and building. It also contains important life lessons.

Here are ten of mine.

A rant about A Song Below Water by Bethany C. Morrow

I read the YA fantasy novel A Song Below Water by Black author Bethany C. Morrow. It’s a powerful book, but the oppression it portrays might not make it the best escapist read right now.

As part of my recent mission to read a string of books by Black authors, I read A Song Below Water by Bethany C. Morrow. Sebastian and Rain had strong opinions about it. I’ll let them explain.

In case you missed it, last week I wrote about A Song of Wraiths and Ruin. I’m thinking of renaming my WIP so it has “song” in the title.

Rain: I get to start this time! This book was such a weird mix. It’s set in the real world, which I don’t approve of, but it had all these mysterious magical elements that I loved so much. There’s only one gargoyle in Portland, and it lives on the roof of the main characters’ house. Sirens are real–they’re always Black women–but they look like people and live like anyone else, and there are magical elokos who also look like people and are universally adored, sprites whose pranks occasionally go too far–

Sebastian: I got it. You liked the magic stuff.

Taking stock of my writing activities

Writing a novel involves a lot more than just drafting and editing. Here I enumerate my writing activities and try to figure out why I never have time for them all.

It struck me recently that I have all these writing-related activities that I don’t do as often as I’d like or have stopped doing entirely. When I did them I thought they were valuable, but now it’s hard to find time.

Which is crazy because I’m literally working 20 hours a week from my living room chair (by the fire because it’s cold).

I should have time to do everything I want, so why don’t I?

In an effort to (begin to) answer this question, I thought I’d enumerate what these writing-related activities are. Then maybe I’ll discover some of them aren’t important. Or that I’m really lazy.

I guess we’re about to find out.

Not a review of A Song of Wraiths and Ruin by Roseanne A. Brown

Sebastian and Rain bicker about what they did and didn’t like in A Song of Wraiths and Ruin by Roseanne A. Brown, a fantasy novel by a black author that was inspired by West African folklore.

A week ago I shared a list of books by black authors that had jumped to the top of my TBR pile. Ten minutes ago I finished the first, A Song of Wraiths and Ruin by Roseanne A. Brown.

In a moment I’ll hand over to Sebastian and Rain to chat about it. In case you haven’t met them, Rain is my reader half and Sebastian is my writer half. I should warn you Sebastian is a bit of a prat, but I hope you don’t hold that against him.

The advantage of setting Sebastian and Rain loose rather than trying to write a review is that this way I don’t have to decide what I think about the book.

Genius, right?

Ten things I have stopped doing

Someone on Quora asked for a list of ten things I’ve stopped doing in life. This is mine. Yes, there are ten. I can count.

The world is in turmoil (May the turmoil cause long-lasting change for the better!), my editing is dragging along (May the editing also cause change for the better!), and it’s kinda cold (So, log fire, yay!).

Also, I’m getting older. Don’t be smug–you’re getting older too.

I didn’t have a topic to blog about today, so I thought I’d go to Quora and answer some questions. The first question I found was so good I reduced “questions” to “question”.

Here it is: What 10 things have you stopped doing in your life?