Goodbye 2023!

2023 was a really terrible year. On the list of terrible things we have major knee surgery, another novel failing to get a book deal, a really upsetting reading slump, Neutron making it clear he’s about ready to retire, my mom being diagnosed with brain cancer, and more. It’s been a rough time, and I can’t wait for 2024 to start and hopefully move in a more positive direction.

But there were some good things that happened in 2023, and I’d like to focus on those right now.

I have a wonderful, supportive group of friends and writing buddies who I honestly could not have gotten through this year without. And this year I really strengthened and developed my friendships with some of my coworkers. I feel like I have an army around me holding me up, and I couldn’t be more happy to have all of them in my life.

I also successfully branded myself as the person in the office with all the space clothes, and I’ve got even more coming for 2024! A silly thing but a good thing. Everyone should have galaxy dresses.

My job has been fabulous about letting me telework from home, so I’ve been able to spend so much more time with my mom than I would have otherwise. We have had so many small adventures in the last few months and built so many precious memories.

I wrote a new book this year. It was a deeply personal book about the first time a friendship ends, but it’s also about prejudice and inclusivity, and I’ve thrown in some vampires, selkies, weerebears, and dragons for fun. The draft needs a lot of work, and I’m currently revising to add more actual plot to balance out all the feelings, but I’ve grown a lot as a writer because of this project, and I think I’ll be really proud of this book in the end. If I ever finish it.

I also started writing another book this fall, which I’m calling my destress project and which has done wonders for my mental health and my love of writing. I’ll have a lot more to say about this in 2024.

And I had two short stories published in 2023, which I completely forgot about in my first draft of this post! “Duet for a Soloist” was published in Electric Spec, and “Where No One Sleeps” was published in Andromeda Spaceways. I’m really proud of both of these stories and so glad I got to share them with you this year!

Despite the reading slump, I also read a total of forty-five books this year. Twenty of them were new books, and twenty-five were rereads. Here are my favorites:

  • The Bartimaeus Trilogy by Jonathan Stroud
  • Bloodmarked by Tracy Deonn
  • Before and After the Book Deal by Courtney Maum
  • Save the Cat! Writes a Young Adult Novel: The Ultimate Guide to Writing a YA Bestseller by Jessica Brody
  • Don’t Want to be Your Monster by Deke Moulton
  • The Thing About Jellyfish by Ali Benjamin
  • Chewing the Fat: An Oral History of Italian Foodways From Fascism to Dolce Vita by Karima Moyer-Nocchi
  • The Chalice of the Gods by Rick Riordan

I have added these books to my book recs page, and I will have more detailed thoughts about them soon, I hope!

As for what’s coming next in 2024? I don’t know, and I’m not going to set any goals for myself right now. I have plans for my blog and books and short stories I want to write, but I’m just going to keep doing my best with everything.

So happy New Year! Here’s to a 2024 full of light and love and words!

January 2023 Update

Hello friends! I can’t believe we’re already at the end of January. It feels like this month has flown by, and also like it has moved incredibly slowly. In other words, it feels like it’s January.

I know one of my goals for 2023 was to post more on my blog (a perennial theme at this point), but my January was packed and stressful, so I’m letting myself off the hook for this month. I do have a whole list of things I want to write about, so stay tuned.

So what happened in January?

I had knee surgery.

Turns out knee surgery is a pretty big deal.

I spent the first half of January in a muddle of really bad pre-surgery anxiety. That comes with the territory when you’ve had fifteen eye operations as a kid. But everyone at the hospital was really fabulous at making sure I was calm and comfortable, and the surgery went well.

Then I spent the second half of January in a muddle of recovering. It’s been a lot, and it hasn’t been without hiccups. My stomach objected to the whole enterprise, forcefully and in just about every way a stomach could object. Then I had something that was possibly a blood clot. But I’m improving every day. I started using crutches a week after surgery, and now, two weeks after surgery, I’m down to one crutch and I’ve started physical therapy. Basically, I’m mobile enough to be very frustrated with how far I still have to go. I hope to be back on a bike this summer, but I’d also happily settle for being rid of this giant brace on my leg and being able to walk around without pain and without my kneecap dislocating. I do want to give a huge shout-out to all the family and friends who have stayed with me, taken care of me and my Neutron boy, sent cookies, and just dropped by to hang out and cheer me up.

With all this going on, most of my other regular pursuits have fallen a bit by the wayside. I only read three books in January, partly because I’m busy and partly because I’m still in a reading slump, though I think I might be coming out of it. My favorite book of January was THE AMULET OF SAMARKAND, the first book in Jonathan Stroud’s BARTIMAEUS TRILOGY. It had both a really compelling and humorous voice and really well done tension. I’m halfway through the second book and enjoying that quite a lot too. Perhaps I will write a blog post about the whole series when I’ve finished.

I also really enjoyed THE MARVELLERS by Dhonielle Clayton. This was a really fun, creative, and diverse take on the traditional magical school story, and I’d definitely recommend everyone check it out—though full disclosure, I did struggle with the audiobook narrator for this one, and I usually don’t have problems with audiobook narrators. I’ve been reading a lot of magical school stories in the last few months, so I’m thinking I might do a post on what those stories look like these days.

After a few weeks without much progress on my own work, I am writing again, slowly but surely. This is also helping to improve my mood immensely. I’m one of those authors who gets very cranky when I don’t write for more than a few days. I’ve decided that my writing goal for 2023 is to finish the two manuscripts I’m working on. If I have time, I have a stretch goal of going to look back at one of my older projects and do some work toward reimagining it and/or disecting it for parts, but that’s definitely a stretch goal. Otherwise, I’ve been brainstorming some ideas for fun writing posts for this blog.

Oh, one more thing. I received two short story acceptances in January. The contracts aren’t all signed, sealed, and delivered yet, so I can’t share more details, but watch this spot! I’m really excited for you to read both of these little tales.

More soon! I hope your 2023 is off to a good start and you have a happy February!

Where in the World Was Jameyanne in 2022

Happy New Year, friends!

See? I told you I’d be back.

I’m sorry I haven’t blogged that much in a long time. 2022 was an exceptionally busy year, in both good and difficult ways, and even though long-form blogging is still something I really love, I’m sorry to say it slipped by the wayside for most of the year. One of my goals of 2023 is to be better about that, especially with social media feeling so uncertain these days.

But before I tell you more about my 2023 goals, I want to tell you what I was up to in 2022 that consumed so much of my energy I didn’t update this website for months. The short answer is many, many things.

First, in 2022, I worked on five different books, all in different stages, from outlining to revision. I completely rewrote the middle grade fantasy, only for my revisions to reveal some deeper problems with the main character’s motivation and the stakes of the story which I’m still considering how to fix. I did a ton of research and then began rewriting the novella I wrote for my senior honors project in college to be a historical fantasy set in WWII Italy. I was really happy with what I was doing, but started to feel like it was just too depressing for me at the time, so I set it aside (I think I have a plan to make it less depressing though). I made some subtle revisions to my middle grade space adventure which I think really helped bring it to a new level. I outlined and started drafting a middle grade contemporary paranormal project about a girl with vampire parents who starts a club for kids with one foot in the supernatural world, and so far that’s been a delight. And all year long I’ve been plugging away at a novel set in the same world as my musical phoenix stories. I think I’m almost finished with my first draft, and while I love it more with every word I write and every discovery I make about these characters and this world, I also see how much revision this is going to need, which has made moving forward with the first draft feel really difficult. This has without a doubt been the hardest thing I have ever written, but I am also super proud of it, incredible flaws and all. I hope, when I’m done, it will be brilliant.

There were times this year, particularly when I set projects aside for the moment, when I felt like I was just spinning my wheels or even moving backward. But looking back at all the writing I’ve done and how hard I worked, I can tell that just isn’t true. No, I haven’t finished as many projects as I would have hoped in 2022, and yes, the rejections continue to come in, but I can also see that my writing has improved by leaps and bounds—my ideas, my plot structure, my characters, my world building, even my sentence to sentence writing feel like it’s at a much higher level now than at the beginning of 2022—and that’s because of how hard I worked this year.

Last spring, I also made good on something I’d been wanting to do since I moved to the D.C. area: I joined a tandem cycling group. I’ve been tandem biking with my family since I was a kid, and it was great to take my skills to the next level and bike all over the city and make new friends while I was at it. One thing led to another, and I’m now a member of two tandem cycling groups. From April to October, I was biking 20-30 miles twice a week most weeks.

Except when I wasn’t. Because I got covid from one of my tandem captains in July and was down for about six weeks. I’ve been sick before, but it was nothing like this. I have never experienced such profound fatigue. Most of the time I couldn’t hold myself up in a sitting position, and just taking my dog outside and back in left me out-of-breath and completely exhausted. This disease is no joke. If you’ve managed not to get it so far, do everything you can to keep it that way. If you’ve gotten it once before, do everything you can to make sure you don’t get it again.

Another unfortunate side effect of all the biking I did is that I somehow managed to reinjure my right knee. I twisted my knee in the past, and at first I thought I’d just aggravated the old injury, because it really didn’t hurt that much, but then I noticed my kneecap was going way out to the side whenever I bent my knee. A long saga of doctors visits and physical therapy later, and it turns out I need surgery. I tore the ligament that’s holding my kneecap in place, and it’s fully dislocating whenever I bend my knee, and this isn’t something that will heal on its own. I have been incredibly anxious about all of this, because honestly surgery is pretty much the one thing in the world I am absolutely terrified of, so it’s been a rough couple months to get to this point. My surgery is next week,and I’m looking forward both to getting on the road to recovery so I can get back to the activities I love and also just not having the prospect of surgery dangling over my head.

Back on the good side of 2022, I’m still loving my job licensing satellites at the FCC, and I’m now in charge of my office’s intern program, so it’s been a really busy time at work, but I love everything I’m doing. I’ve also been doing some work presenting at conferences and working with blind teens on how to find a job as a blind person, and that’s all been a wonderful experience.

Looking back on 2022, I can see there’s so much I did that I’m really proud of and really excited about, but at the same time, I’m hoping 2023 is a bit quieter, because I’m tired. I would like to get back to blogging more. I would also like to try more new recipes, since cooking fun new things was something else that fell through the cracks a bit this year, and I miss it.

Otherwise, I’m trying not to set too many concrete goals for myself in 2023. Yes, there are specific projects I’d like to finish, but right now I feel like it’s more important for me to challenge myself simply to keep moving forward and keep doing my best for everything I try. We’ll see what this year holds, but as long as I’m moving forward, whatever I accomplish is something to be proud of.

My Favorite Books of 2022

Hello friends! I know I haven’t been posting a lot this year, and I promise I have lots of plans for new posts in 2023, but in the meantime, here I am, rolling back in with my annual list of favorite reads.

My reading goal for 2022 was different from my reading goals in the past. In previous years, I’ve made goals to read a specific number of books, usually around 100, with no preference to new rereads or rereads. In 2022, I set a goal to read 50 books that I haven’t read before.

I read 67 new books in 2022. I also reread 18 books, for a grand total of 85 books in 2022. It’s not as many books as I’ve read in past years, but 2022 was also quite a year (more on that in a future post).

The books I read mainly fell into three genres this year: fantasy, with a big emphasis on middle grade fantasy; historical fiction focused on WWII; and historical nonfiction focused on WWII. I was trying to refresh my research to venture back into rewriting my college honors thesis into a historical fantasy novel set in WWII Italy. I did get pretty far into that revision before turning to something else, because WWII is really depressing friends, and there was enough bad stuff happening in the world this summer and fall that I needed a minute. But this project really drove what I read this year.

So without further ado, I give you my favorite books of 2022

The Bone Shard Emperor by Andrea Stewart: epic fantasy; a gripping sequel to The Bone Shard Daughter, which I read at the end of 2021.

Redemptor by Jordan Ifueko: another epic fantasy; also another sequel; a fabulous conclusion to the Raybearer duology.

Night Owl by Sarah Mlynowski, Emily Jenkins, and Lauren Myracle: a heartfelt conclusion to the Upside-Down Magic series.

Sal and Gabi Break the Universe and Sal and Gabi Fix the Universe by Carlos Hernandezz: a middle grade sci fi duology full of so much humor and heart. I just adored these books!

The Night Crossing by Karen Ackerman and The Butterfly by Patricia Polacco: I’m putting these two together because they were the first historical fiction books I ever read about WWII. I was glad to discover they held up all these years later, and it was fascinating to revisit books I’d read so long ago and see what I remembered and what I was surprised by all over again. (And before you say anything, I’m not counting books I read more than twenty years ago and haven’t seen since as rereads).

The Problim Children by Natalie Lloyd: another fun middle grade adventure/fantasy novel. I was so impressed with how Natalie Lloyd handles such a large cast with such finesse. I can’t wait to read the next book in this series.

Across the Greengrass Fields and Where the Drowned Girls Go by Seanan McGuire: The next two installments of the fantasy Wayward Children series I started in 2021. These books are about what happens to children who have adventures in other worlds after they come home, and I was really intrigued and excited by the turn in the series these books took. Looking forwart to the next one, which should be out in early 2023.

We Must Not Forget: Holocaust Stories of Survival and Resistance and We Had to Be Brave: Escaping the Nazis on the Kindertransport by Deborah Hopkinson: both of these books should be required reading. They tell the true stories of young people living through, escaping, and resisting the Holocaust, in their own words. Nothing I can say here can express the power of these too books.

All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days: The True Story of the American Woman At the Heart of the German Resistance to Hitler by Rebecca Donner: in this nonfiction book about WWII, the author tells the story of her great aunt who worked in the heart of the German resistance. Definitely worth a read.

One Jar of Magic by Corey Ann Haydu: a heartwarming middle grade fantasy about struggling to meet parental expectations, escaping abuse, and finding your own family and your own magic. Loved this!

All the Impossible Things by Lindsay Lackey: a middle grade fantasy that combines so many of my favorite things. There’s found family and discovering your own quiet magic.

The Firebird Song by Arnee Flores: a beautiful middle grade fantasy quest about what it costs to save the world and what true friendship means.

A Place to Hang the Moon by Kate Albus: A historical fiction middle grade set in WWIIabout three orphans with no relatives and a large inheritance who are sent into the English countryside fleeing the Blitz and also in the hopes of finding a family who will adopt them. This was another book that touched my heart.

The War that Saved My Life and The War I Finally Won by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley: a middle grade historical fiction duology about a disabled girl fleeing the Blitz and her abusive mother and discovering independence and freedom, safety and family, and horses.

Lisa’s War by Carol Matas: Another middle grade WWII historical fiction, about a gJewish girl in Denmark joining the resistance against the Nazis. This one was really powerful.

The Boy on the Wooden Box by Leon Leyson: The true story of the youngest person Oscar Schindler saved from the Holocaust. This one made me cry so much. So moving.

The Librarian of Auschwitz by Antonio Iturbe: This book was absolutely incredible. It’s a novelization of the true story of a school on the children’s block in Auschwitz, and the illicit library run in that school. It is an emotional, heart wrenching story, and I think absolutely everyone should read it.

Between Shades of Gray and Salt to the Sea by Ruta Sepetys:These two historical fiction novels are related standalones. I loved them because they dealt with areas of WWII history I didn’t know anything about. The writing is also stellar. Highly recommend both these books, and I’ll definitely checking out this author’s other work.

Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein: I’m late to the party on this one, but this book was absolutely breathtaking! If you haven’t read it, you must.

Witchlings by Claribel A. Ortega: A delightful middle grade fantasy adventure about discovering magic and friendship and defeating some very bad bad guys. Really looking forward to the second book.

The Golden Enclaves by Naomi Novik: Naomi Novik’s Scholomance series has been getting better and better with each book, and this finale made the whole series just incredible. It definitely was everything I wanted and more.

Amari and the Great Game by B. B. Alston: A delightful sequel to Amari and the Night Brothers, which I read and loved in 2021. And OMG that ending! When does the next book come out?

If you’ve read any of these books, I’d love to talk about them with you. And if you decide to pick any of these up in 2023, let me know. Finally, if you have any recommendations for books you simply couldn’t put down, books that grabbed you and wouldn’t let you go from beginning to end, please give them to me.

I hope everyone had a wonderful year of books in 2022 and I wish you all even more great reads in 2023!

January and February Update

Hello friends, and happy spring. Warm weather seems to have finally arrived in the D.C. area after a winter which was long and cold, and then not cold, and then cold again. The last couple months in particular, where we’ve swung from almost summery conditions back to the depths of winter weather have been a bit rough. But the warm weather has arrived, and the Covid numbers are a bit better, at least for now, so I’ve been tentatively stepping out of my apartment again to see friends and go to in-person barre classes (the barre requires vaccinations, and I’m testing before seeing friends).

January and February were pretty hectic months, which is why I haven’t posted recently. I moved to a bigger apartment at the end of January. I was just moving to a new apartment in the same building, so it wasn’t the hardest move I’ve ever done, but most of the month was still taken up with packing and getting through the administrative work of moving. And then I’ve been unpacking and organizing my new space throughout February. It’s been a lot of work, but I have a den now that I’ve set up as my cozy writing space, and the rest of my apartment is bigger too, so it’s overall a lot more comfortable. I also have more windows, so it’s even sunnier than my old apartment, which was an unexpected bonus.

I had so much going on in January and February that I hit a bit of a reading slump, which for me means I read about six books each month, for a total of twelve books by the end of February (I’m not exactly sure how much I read each month). Eight of the books I read were new, and four were rereads. I know this still sounds like a lot of books for two months, but I also didn’t really enjoy many of them until the end of February. A lot of them were fine, but not as special as I wanted them to be.

Of course, there were a few standouts. First was The Bone Shard Emperor by Andrea Stewart, sequel to The Bone Shard Daughter. This series, The Drowning Empire, is so rich and creative, and I adore the characters. It follows a number of very different people, the emperor’s daughter, a wanted smuggler, a woman with amnesia (best description I have), the daughter of an island governor, and a resistance leader. There’s also strange and wonderful and terrifying magic. I’m being vague because first, it’s hard to describe, but second, it’s such a joy to discover and I don’t want to spoil it. If you haven’t read it, I highly recommend, and if you have, I would love to talk about it.

The second book that really stood out to me was Sal and Gabi Break the Universe by Carlos Hernandez. This book is about Sal and Gabi, two seventh graders at a school for the arts in Miami who, well, break the universe. Literally, Sal can create wormholes, and he keeps accidentally reaching into alternate universes to, say, put raw chickens in bullies’ lockers, and to bring alternate versions of his dead mother back into his universe. Everything about this book was just so vibrant and fun and loving, and it gave me so many feelings. This is another one you simply must read!

While I didn’t feel like I got a lot of reading done in the last couple months, I did get a lot of writing done. At the beginning of December, I gave my middle grade fantasy book to a set of totally new beta readers, and I got their feedback at the end of January. It was all super useful and really helped me crystallize what the problems were with the project. I have since taken all their comments, broken it down into categories, come up with solutions to the problems identified, created a revision outline, and started revising. These haven’t been easy revisions: I’ve rewritten my opening, cut a number of characters, reordered a number of plot events to streamline the events and fix pacing issues, added some new stuff to fill in some missing pieces, and I still have to rework my climax and ending. But I’m so far really happy with what I’ve done, and hopefully I’ll wind up with an even stronger book.

Otherwise, work has been busier than ever. I’m being given a lot more responsibilities, and I’m really enjoying it. It’s hard to believe I’ve been at this job for two and a half years, and two of them have been during the pandemic. I’m definitely looking forward to getting back into the office and getting to know my coworkers again, but at least with the bigger apartment, I’m enjoying teleworking more. Who’d have thought extra space would help that.

I hope everyone’s keeping well. I’m planning to post again soon with some thoughts on researching historical fiction, assuming, of course, that I can wrangle those thoughts into something coherent. In the meantime, enjoy the start of spring.

August Update: Writing, Writing, and More Writing

Yes, I know I said I was going to try and get posts out more frequently, and I know it’s mid-September and I’m just now talking about August, but honestly I’ve spent the last couple weeks trying to figure out what happened to August and what I actually did. It felt like August lasted forever, but at the same time it just slid on by in a haze of hot, stormy weather and a whole lot of writing.

I did get to spend a long weekend at home with my family, which was fun, even if I squeezed all my regular doctor and dentist appointments into that time. Sidenote, flying has become really stressful. I also had some fun hangouts with my writing group where we chatted and actually got writing done. A good friend from college is moving to the D.C. area in the next couple weeks, and I also got to visit with her when she came out to apartment hunt.

Otherwise, I mostly took Neutron for walks when it wasn’t too hot or pouring rain, and I wrote. I finished my latest draft of my book, and I wrote two short short stories and a poem in August, which is just crazy. I also definitely started feeling the urge to start drafting a new book, which makes sense because I’ve pretty much been revising my book-length projects since 2019. So I snuck in an outline for the project I want to work on for National Novel Writing Month this year. I’m so excited for this one I’m not sure I can wait until November to start though.

I mentioned this on the blog a few weeks ago, but just in case you missed it, my short story “Moon by Moon We Go Together” was also published in August in the Triangulation: Habitats anthology. You can get the anthology here, and you can read more about where the story came from right over here.

While I was really productive on the writing side in August, I feel like I’ve fallen into a bit of a reading slump. It’s been worse this month than it was in August, but I’ve been having a hard time picking up new books and getting into them, even if it’s something I’m really excited to read. Once I’m into the book, I’m fine, but then when I finish it will be a few days before I pick up something new, which isn’t how I’ve been reading for the last couple years. It might be because I’ve been listening to so much of the Writing Excuses podcast, because all those episodes are so short and digestible and I’m learning so much. It’s easy to say, “I’ll just listen to one more.” But I also think I’m just generally tired, and while I’ve read some books I’ve really enjoyed, most of what I’ve read in the last few months has only been okay. I’ve read so much in the last couple years, and I feel like I’m getting picky.

I only read five books in August. A couple, like Sourdough and Honey Girl, were really fun but didn’t quite come together for me for various reasons. I really enjoyed Zero G by Dan Wells, though it felt like the author was a bit didactic on the science of how gravity works on a spaceship, even for a middle grade book. I was also a huge fan of the third Mysterious Benedict Society book, The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Prisoner’s Dilemma. I love these children and all their crazy adventures! My one complaint on that is that it sort of feels like the kids have less and less agency with each book, but that’s a very minor complaint for me because I love all this so much. (Relatedly, I did finally finish the Mysterious Benedict Society show and it was great! Would definitely recommend.

My absolute favorite book of August, though, was The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal. This is the first book in her Lady Astronaut series. The third book is nominated for a Hugo, as is the whole series, so I decided I better read them all. And between this and my love for For All Mankind, the show on Apple TV, I’ve realized I’m definitely a fan of alternate history/science fiction about the space race. The Calculating Stars is about a woman trying to open the astronaut program to women after a meteor strikes Earth in 1952. The impact will cause massive climate change, necessitating outer space colonies. And it is amazing! You should all go read it now!

And that’s it for August. Let me know what you’ve been up to, and if you’ve read any of the books I mention here, I’d love to discuss them.

Reading, Writing, and Swimming in July

In my last blog post, I mentioned that I wanted to try something new, more of a general life update than just a roundup of all the books I read that month. The monthly reading roundup posts were starting to feel tedious to me, and I was struggling to have energy to post other things. My hope is these posts will be more fun for me, and you, going forward and that they will give me more energy to write other things for this blog. So let’s give it a shot!

July was a pretty good month. Yes it was a million degrees in D.C. all the time, but I was able to wait to take walks with Neutron at least until the sun went down. It wasn’t much cooler then, but at least we weren’t being baked alive. I did a lot of outdoor barre classes, which was fun, and at the end of the month, the studio opened up for indoor classes, mask optional if you’re vaccinated (and they check, which makes me very happy). I also finished rewatching all of the Tangled series in Italian, and I’ve so far really been enjoying the adaptation for The Mysterious Benedict Society.

In mid-July, my friends and I went up to New Jersey for a long weekend. It was meant to be a writing retreat, and some of us got writing done, but mostly it was hours of playing a travesty of volleyball, with a beach ball, in the pool. We christened our game “sport,” because we writerly types are so creative. It was a great weekend all around. I don’t think I’ve laughed so much in a really long time, and I went back to D.C. feeling much less stressed about the state of the world.

In other good news, one of my friends at this retreat had a cold (she tested negative for Covid, otherwise she wouldn’t have come), and I did not get sick. This was the first time I can definitively say I was exposed to germs since I found out I had lime disease at the start of the pandemic. Staying at home for a year and a half and wearing a mask whenever I go out has meant I haven’t been sick in all that time, which has been wonderful and such a welcome change from the constant illness I was dealing with all through my last year of law school, studying for the bar, and my first few months in D.C., but I had no idea if my lime had become chronic or if the antibiotics had worked. So this weekend I was away with my friends, I knew for sure I had been exposed to a cold, and I did not get sick. I am absolutely delighted, because I’m pretty sure this means the antibiotics worked and I don’t have chronic lime. I feel really lucky and so relieved.

I read fourteen books in July, bringing my total for the year up to 84 books. I finished the Princess Diaries series and for the most part really enjoyed the ending (though I wish we got to actually see the royal wedding). I also finished the Greystone Secrets trilogy by Margaret Peterson Haddix. I read the first two books last year and loved them, and I reread them this month before reading the third book. The third book, The Messengers, was a lot of fun, but honestly things got weird and it didn’t feel like it pulled the mysteries together for me. This month, I also discovered the Extraordinaries series by T. J. Klune and Illuminae by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff. The Extraordinaries was a lot of fun, I absolutely adore the voice and the characters, and I can’t wait to find out what happens in the third book. But a major caveat for me is I’m really not sure how the subplot with Nick’s father, who is a cop, and the issue of police brutality, is handled in these books. It felt forced and shallow to me, and this made me uncomfortable. I’m hoping it comes to something in the third book. Illuminae was cool because it started out as a typical YA romance type thing, except in space, and then about a third of the way through you realize that is not what this book is at all, and it was great. But then at about the two thirds mark, the book did something that made me think there were only two possible endings, and I didn’t like either of them, so I stopped caring. The ending is something totally different and it’s really cool and I can’t wait for the sequel, but that last bit where I didn’t care really put a damper on how I feel about the book.

My favorite book of July was Amari and the Night Brothers by B. B. Alston. This book was absolutely amazing! It’s a middle grade book about a young black girl, Amari, who joins the bureau of supernatural affairs to try to find her missing older brother. She confronts bullies, entrance trials, and evil magicians and she is awesome! She also has an illegal talent making her life a whole lot harder. This book is heartwarming and beautiful and so so powerful, and I cannot wait for the sequel! In the meantime, you should all go read it right now!

Unfortunately, I had a least favorite book of July as well, Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse. I read this because it was on the Hugo ballot, and I did not like it at all. I normally try to find something good in every book I read, even if it turns out that it wasn’t the right story for me, but I just couldn’t here. Not only were there so many problems with the writing and the story, but I found the ablest tropes it employed to be incredibly harmful and just all around gross. I have so much more to say on this book, and it has inspired me to work on another post on how to write blind characters without perpetuating harmful stereotypes, which I will hopefully have ready for you all next week, so stay tuned.

In happier news, I discovered Brandon Sanderson’s 2020 writing lectures at BYU on YouTube and binged them all in a week. A lot of the lessons were things I already knew because I’ve been writing a long time myself, but I definitely picked up some useful nuggets and new ways of looking at things that I think will improve my writing. I have since been listening to all of the archives of the Writing Excuses podcast too and really enjoying it. I’m very late to the party on this podcast, obviously, but in case you’re like me and haven’t listened to Writing Excuses before, I recommend it. Each episode is only fifteen minutes long, so it’s very digestible and I’ve learned a lot.

I’ve also been super productive with my writing this month. I finished a draft of my fantasy mystery project, the memory wiping Academy novel I’ve mentioned on here before. My writing group has been reading the final chapter this week and they’re giving me feedback tomorrow. The book needs a lot of work still, but I think this draft is definitely the closest I’ve been to the story I’m trying to tell.

I’ve also been hard at work on some final revisions to the middle grade space adventure novel. I’ve been trying to add more emotion and voice for each of my point of view characters. At first it was kind of a counterintuitive revision for me, because I tend to take “show don’t tell” to an extreme when it comes to character reactions and feelings, but this isn’t the best approach for middle grade, and once I got into it and adjusted my mindset, it’s actually been a really fun revision.

Finally, four years ago when I was at Seeing Eye, I had a free course on writing flash fiction, and I got about halfway through it before training with Neutron became too consuming for me to consider. I had the beginnings of seven connected flash fiction pieces set in my Phoenix Song universe, and I had middles for most of them, but I never finished, and whenever I’ve sat down to work on the project over the years something hasn’t felt right about it. This month, I had the idea to put the flash pieces together into one short story, and it worked beautifully, though my ending may still need some work. It made me really happy to finish this story and have another Phoenix story completed. Hopefully I’ll be able to share it with you soon.

When I write it all out like that, July was quite a month! I hope you’ve all been keeping safe and having fun. What have you all been up to this summer?

June Reading Roundup

Happy July everyone. Summer has really hit, and we’re steaming away here in D.C. I was still really worried about what was going on with Neutron for the first half of the month, but then Seeing Eye came to work with me and we decided that at least right now we’re totally safe, which was a huge relief. Otherwise, it was a pretty chill month, except for the temperature of course. My writing group had a few in person gatherings, but we’re still doing our regular meetings remotely for the time being because the metro has some summer construction we’re trying to avoid.

In addition to reading, I finally finished watching the Tangled TV show on Disney Plus, and I just want to give it a shout-out because it’s adorable. Tangled is probably my favorite Disney movie, and the show was a great sequel. Also the music is very catchy. I also discovered in June that I can watch so many things on Disney Plus in Italian, and since I’ve been feeling like my Italian is rusty, I started rewatching the Tangled show in Italian. It was hard at first but ultimately really fun. Half my thoughts are in Italian now, which is just the way I like it.

Collage of the seven books I read in June: A Little Princess, The Bone Shard Daughter, The Mysterious Benedict Society, The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Perilous Journey, Princess Mia, Throne of Jade, and The City We BecameI read seven books in June, the same I read in May. It was almost all sci fi and fantasy books and then one classic. The classic was a standalone, I continued two series I’m in the middle of, started two other series, and one of the books I’m not sure if it’s meant to stand alone or be the start of the series. My writing group is going to Worldcon this year, since it’s in D.C., so I also started working my way through the books that have been nominated for Hugo Awards. I’ve already read some of them—Raybearer, Legendborn, and the Murderbot series at least. Harrow the Ninth is nominated for a Hugo, and since I haven’t read the first book in the series, Gideon the Ninth, I decided I should read that first. Honestly, I couldn’t get through it. I got about a third of the way through and still had no idea what was going on, and I ended up putting it down. As you know, I don’t put books down lightly. I think I can name all the books I’ve put down ever. There might only be three. A lot of my writing group is really insisting that I give Gideon another try, and maybe I will, but we’ll see.

I also want to throw it out there that I reread all the Nevermoor books again (this might be the fourth time this year), but this time I read them in Braille. It was a really interesting experience to see things like punctuation and spelling sentence structure that I didn’t necessarily notice when listening to the audiobooks. I am also super excited that we now appear to have a title and a synopsis for the fourth book, even though it won’t be coming out until the end of 2022. I realize I have gotten myself stuck in a loop of Nevermoor, but there are far worse loops to get stuck in, and it makes me happy, so I don’t care.

But now let’s chat about the new books that I finished in June.

First, I read A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett. This is set in England in the early 1900s, I think. Sarah is sent to boarding school, and when her beloved father dies leaving her nothing, the headmistress of the boarding school makes her become a servant and live in the attic and everything is awful. Frances Hodgson Burnett also wrote The Secret Garden, which I didn’t realize until after I finished this book, but there were several times throughout this book when I kept thinking “this reminds me of The Secret Garden.” In general, I enjoyed this book, hisoough it had that slower, very descriptive quality of older books that I’m not overly fond of. It also had an omniscient narration that told us some things that undercut the tension of the ending. But this was a nice little book, and if you haven’t read it, you might enjoy it.

Next, I read The Bone Shard Daughter by Andrea Stewart. This is the first book in the Drowning Empire series, and I think the next book is coming out later this year. The Bone Shard Daughter follows a whole bunch of characters living on this empire of floating islands. We have the emperor’s daughter who has lost most of her memories due to an illness and is trying to learn her father’s magic. There is the thief who is searching for his wife who was kidnapped years ago and is now getting roped into saving children from the yearly festivals that give magic to the emperor. There’s the daughter of the governor of one island whose girlfriend is involved in the rebellion. And there are people trapped in a mental fog working on a mysterious island. There is also a very creepy magic system that we discover over the course of the book. My one and only complaint, and it’s a very minor complaint, is that I felt like the emperor’s daughter was supposed to be the main character, especially because of the title, and she was actually the only character I had a hard time being engaged with for a while. But her story did hook me, and once it did, and everything started coming together, it was so great. I particularly loved how all these pieces and layers came together and this book just built and built and built to this great climax and finale. I can’t wait for the sequel.

Next, I read the first two books in Trenton Lee Stewart’s The Mysterious Benedict Society series: The Mysterious Benedict Society and The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Perilous Journey. The first book is about a group of unusual and talented children who are recruited to infiltrate a boarding school and foil the headmaster’s evil plan. And the second book sees the kids off on new and exciting adventures. These books were a ton of fun. I really enjoyed them, and I’m looking forward to getting the next one out of the library. I’m also currently watching the show that’s coming out on Disney and that’s been a lot of fun.

After that, I read the ninth Princess Diaries book, Princess Mia by Meg Cabot. I believe last month I complained that Mia hadn’t grown as a character much throughout the series so far, and that she was an absolute idiot in the last book. But this book saw Mia really having to deal with the consequences of her actions grow as a character and make some complicated decisions and I love it. It was certainly darker and more serious than the earlier books in the series, but at this point that’s what I needed.

Next, I read Throne of Jade by Naomi Novik, the second book in the Temeraire series. The Chinese want Temeraire back, because they believe only the emperial line can have celestial dragons. Temeraire refuses to be parted from Lawrence, so together they travel to China and political games begin to try and keep Temeraire with Lawrence (the British side) and to keep him in China (the Chinese side). It’s more complicated than that but there you go. I didn’t enjoy this quite as much as the first book. The pacing just felt very weird to me. Most of it was very slow, and then the last third or so was a roller coaster of action and political moves and countermoves and it really finished with a bang. That being said, I did enjoy it a lot, particularly the development of the bond between Lawrence and Temeraire, and I’m looking forward to getting my hands on the third book.

As I mentioned above, I’ve started working my way through the books nominated for Hugo awards this year. In June, I read The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin. This was actually my first ever Jemisin book, and I will definitely be checking out more of her work. Recommendations welcome. The City We Became is about how at a certain point cities become actually alive, are born into sentient, human being-type avatars of themselves, but the birth of New York goes wrong, and a bunch of very different people become the avatars for each of the burrows of New York and have to find each other and fight off the evil force that is trying to prevent the birth of New York. If the birth of New York fails, well pretty much New York is gone and a whole lot of stuff around it. What I really liked about this book was how it took a really weird concept and made it really accessible. I also loved the variety of characters we were dealing with. I was not totally thrilled about the ending. This is the book that I’m unclear if it’s meant to have a sequel or not. It’s one of those endings that if there’s more to come, I am totally fine with it. If this is it, it just wasn’t completely satisfying to me.

And that’s it for June. I’ve realized over the past few weeks that unfortunately I’m not enjoying writing these posts as much as I used to. I love talking about books, but these monthly posts about everything I’ve read are starting to feel kind of tedious for me. So starting next month, I’m going to try something a little different. Instead of talking about everything I’ve read each month, I’m going to give you more of a general update on what I’ve been up to with life and writing and then talk briefly about my absolute favorite books of the month. I’m hoping this will make the posts more exciting for me to write and give me some more energy and time to maybe put some other posts up here more frequently. So stay tuned for that. In the meantime, I hope you’re enjoying your summers and staying safe.

Mopsy the Magnificent Crosses the Rainbow Bridge

Ten and a half years ago, I stood on a graduation stage and spoke to my high school class. I told them about cliff diving in the Grand Canyon, about the terror and joy of leaping into thin air with no idea of how you will land. And immediately after  the graduation ceremony, I took my own leap. That very afternoon, I got on a plane to the Seeing Eye. Two days later, on June 21, 2010, my trainer brought me into the lounge and introduced me to my first Seeing Eye dog.

“This is Mopsy,” she said, as a little black lab sniffed me all over.

“Mopsy?” It sounded like a frumpy old British woman. “Can you spell that?” I asked, not sure I’d heard her right.

Mopsy's official Seeing Eye portrait: Mopsy sits in her harness, her head turned toward the cameraNo, I did not like the name Mopsy. I actually considered changing it, but nothing I came up with seemed right. And the name grew on me. It fit this spunky girl perfectly, and soon she was not just Mopsy but also Mopsy Girl, Mopsicle, Flopsy Mopsy, and the Mops.

Mops and I became a team over our four weeks of training and then beyond, from our first misadventure on the beach, where we both got dehydrated and the sand was too hot for our feet and we had to be rescued so that she wouldn’t drink the ocean, to our first days at Kenyon College, when we made a bunch of new friends and Mops discovered that chocolate chip cookies are not food for doggies.Jameyanne sits on the beach with her back to the camera but her head turned slightly toward the camera. Mopsy stands in front of her, also looking toward the camera. Mopsy attended every class and sat through every exam. She was very well-behaved and quiet, though she did untie my shoes under the table once, and she was known to grumble happily every time someone mentioned a dog or whenever the silence after a professor asked a question became too long. She learned Italian right along with me, and we spent a summer abroad in Torino in 2012. She put up with dressing up for Halloween but made her displeasure known by shredding the antennae off her costume during English class. Mopsy is dresed up as a bumble bee, with a stripped yellow and black costume with wings and sparkly gold antennae on her head. She is standing facing away from the camera but is looking back over her shoulder at us.  She stood by me when my childhood pet, Kokopelli, passed away, and then when I lost my eye in 2013. In 2014, Mopsy and I graduated from Kenyon, me with my bachelors in English and creative writing, and Mopsy with her bark-elors degree as dogophonus maximus, because she loved to sing along with my clarinet and the wind ensemble. On her diploma, in Latin, it says, “With me you will go safely.” Mopsy's diploma from Kenyon College

And then we were off to Italy. We spent a year in Assisi, with trips to Rome, Florence, Bari, Matera, Narni, Ancona, Venice, Spoletto, Spello, Foligno, and Montefalco. Italy was a huge challenge, but Mopsy rose to meet it, and soon we were dodging radical Italian drivers with, if not ease, at least more skill. I’m not exaggerating when I say Mopsy saved my life at least three times a week that year. But while Mopsy rose to the challenge magnificently, Italy took its toll. Over the next two years, while I worked at the New Hampshire Disability Rights Center, took the LSAT, applied to law school, and then attended my first year at Harvard Law, Mopsy slowed down considerably and became defensive aggressive with other dogs. It became abundantly clear at the end of my 1L year that it was time for Mopsy to retire.

Jameyanne and Mopsy cuddling on the floorMopsy was with me through some of the most important years of my life. When I left home for college, took my first steps as an adult, realized my independence, went off to law school, she was there. When I was happy, she shared in the joy, and when I was lonely, she was there to be a friend.

Mopsy moved in with my parents, and I went back to Seeing Eye and was matched with the Neutron Star. I finished law school, passed the bar, and moved to D.C. to start work at the FCC as a space lawyer. And Mopsy enjoyed three and a half years of walks in the woods with my father, soccer in the yard with my brother, naps in the sun at my mother’s feet while she worked on the computer, and cuddles with her doggy friends in front of the fire. Mopsy lies on the floor wrapped in a tie-dye blanket. Only her head is visible above the blanket.

Mopsy had a lot of doggy friends over the years. First, of course, was our yellow lab Kokopelli.

Kokopelli, a yellow lab, is curled up in a ball on a dog bed, and Mopsy, a black lab, is lying with her body curved around his and her head next to his.
Kokopelli, a yellow lab, is curled up in a ball on a dog bed, and Mopsy, a black lab, is lying with her body curved around his and her head next to his.

Koko never really liked other dogs, but he did like the Mops. Later on, the tables turned when we got a new puppy, Rocket. Mopsy sitting on a blue couch with tiny baby Rocket, a black lab puppy, cuddled up against her side. Rocket was objectively annoying. One time, he tried to chew on Mopsy’s ear, and she very gently put her paw on his back and put his entire head in her mouth to prove that she was in charge. But she let little Rocket snuggle with her too. Mopsy and Neutron had a special bond from the beginning.

I came home to New Hampshire during the pandemic so I could spend the holidays with my family, so I’ve been here with her for the last few months. I am so glad I did, because I was able to spend this time with her. Mopsy became more vocal in the last few years, grumbling and growling and sometimes howling when we were  playing or when she wanted attention, but in November she became very quiet. One Saturday night, we filled her bowl, and she didn’t come, in itself surprising. We called her, and she didn’t come. We went to find her, and she was struggling to get up off her bed. She had developed a sudden, severe limp, and she was in so much pain she didn’t eat that night, though she did eat the next morning. After examining her paws and her legs for cuts or other injuries, we were pretty sure she had an infection in her front left paw. I checked her ears, and sure enough, her left ear was infected too. Mopsy has had ear infections in the past, even ear infections that had spread to her foot, but nothing this sudden, and coupled with her sudden quiet, loss of appetite, and the excessive drooling she was doing, we were pretty concerned. We took her to the vet. They treated her ear and paw and also took x-rays. They discovered a mass on her spleen that they suspected was cancer.

After a lot of family discussion, we decided not to try to intervene with the cancer. Mopsy was almost twelve and a half, and we were worried, and the vet agreed, that any attempt to remove or further diagnose the mass might do more harm than good. So we gave Mopsy the antibiotic for her foot and ear and did our best to make her as comfortable as possible. But the infection in her front left paw did not get better. Instead it spread to her other feet. So we returned to the vet in early December asking specifically if there was anything we could do about her feet. The vet was now sure the mass on her spleen was cancerous, because apparently abdominal cancers in dogs can present in feet infections like Mopsy had. They gave us a different antibiotic and steroid, but warned us if these didn’t help, there wasn’t much else we could do.

But the medication worked. Mopsy’s feet healed. For a couple weeks, she was getting up and walking around, scrounging for crums when we were cooking, and even barking and grumbling again. I was overjoyed. I’d been facing down losing my Mops for the last few weeks, and now she was getting better. It felt like nothing short of a miracle, and we all thought that now she was acting more like her old self, she would be fine. My mom actually said that the cancer could be something she died with, as opposed to something she died from.

But on Christmas Day, Mopsy started going downhill again. She struggled to get up and started having accidents in the house. Over the next few days, her back legs completely gave out on her; she stopped eating, then stopped drinking; her stomach ballooned out while she lost almost all her weight everywhere else, as if the cancer was eating her from the inside. By Tuesday, she couldn’t lift her head anymore, though she was still licking up the ice cubes I brought her. Neutron and I stayed by her day and night. Neutron snuggling up against her to help keep her warm and even worming his way under the blanket with her.

And I slept on a mattress beside her for the last three nights, always with one hand on her side so she would know I was there.

Yesterday morning, on December 30, 2020, around 10:00 AM, Mopsy passed away peacefully in my arms, surrounded by my mom, younger brother, and Neutron. Today we laid her to rest at our home on Cape Cod, beside Kokopelli. The woods on the Cape was always her favorite place to walk. We planted wildflowers over her grave, and we’re planning to get a granite marker for her. It will be lovely in the springtime.

There are so many more things I want to say, but I can’t express the loss I am feeling right now. I still can’t believe my Mopsy girl, who would put your whole arm in her mouth and nibble on your ears when she was happy, who literally jump for joy and yip with glee when you came home and she wanted to tell you she’d missed you, who could be incredibly stubborn and definitely knew how to manipulate gravity so you couldn’t get her up when she was lying down, who’s breath was always horrendous no matter how often we brushed her teeth, who loved butt scratches and carrying around her blanket and baby carrots and lying at my feet with her head on my shoes and her paw around my ankle, my bestest girl forever, is gone. Mopsy had a long, full life. She was an extremely well-educated, well-traveled dog, and she was surrounded by so much love and had so much love to give. It was her time to leap from this world to the next, but she’s still gone, and I just don’t have words for it.

So instead I drew a picture. They say when our animal friends pass, they cross a rainbow bridge to paradise where they can play together. I found a picture of Mopsy walking in the snow, looking back over her shoulder in her characteristic Mopsy style, and I used that picture to draw Mopsy walking along a rainbow bridge. I hope she’s found her Kokopelli friend, and that she can lie in the sun and sniff every blade of grass and throw bones to her heart’s content in doggy heaven.

Shortly after I got Mopsy, Seeing Eye was doing renovations to its campus, including what they called a path to independence. We donated a brick, engraved for me and Mopsy, and I found it when I returned to Seeing Eye to train with Neutron. It says “Jameyanne and Mopsy, walking with my best friend.” And even though she’s crossed the rainbow bridge, she will still be walking by my side, in my heart, forever.

2020 wrap up

2020 is finally coming to a close. It has been a rough year for everyone on this planet, and I definitely feel ambivalent about writing what in any other year would be a celebratory post about all I accomplished this year and my plans for 2021. Obviously, I don’t feel celebratory. I was only just starting to settle into D.C. with a great job and lovely coworkers and a wonderful new friend group when the pandemic knocked everything flying. And I’ve been lucky. I still have my job, and I am healthy and reasonably sane. But that doesn’t mean it was easy.

I’m also struggling with this post because as I write this, I’m sitting on the floor holding my Mopsy girl, who is very sick and will likely pass in the next couple days, and I’m struggling to think of anything but that. Mopsy deserves an entire post and so so much more, and she will get it, I promise. But this is just a horrendous end to a horrendous year.

I set a number of goals for myself in 2020. I don’t remember what they were, and I don’t think it would be productive to look back at my 2020 New Year’s post to see if I met them. But I continue to find that I deal with stress by being creative, and amid everything, I have accomplished quite a bit.

First, on the writing front, I had two publications this year. My story “A Valentine’s Fear” was published in February by Every Day Fiction and my poem “A World in Seven Flames” was published in the anthology Twilight Worlds: Best of New Myths Volume II. I also have another short story lined up to be published in 2021, so yay!

My writing group is flourishing, virtually of course. It’s become not just a writing group but a great group of friends. Without these guys I don’t know how I would have coped with everything going on this year. In October, we all took Covid tests and quarantined for two weeks before gathering in New Jersey for a Halloween writing retreat, which was a ton of fun, and in the new year we’re going to expand our activities beyond critiquing each other’s stories to also start holding mini workshops where we teach each other what we’re good at.

This year, I managed at least one new draft of three major projects, and more than one draft for two of those projects. I also wrote two new short stories and another poem, which was great because I’ve been so focused on novels for a while. I really enjoyed working in these these different forms, which present unique challenges all their own. Once again, I cope with stress by writing.

I actually wrote almost every day this year. I say almost because I didn’t write yesterday or today, but while writing every day has become a habit that works really well for me, I also have to admit that sometimes, like now, I need to focus on other things, and that’s okay too.

I also read 106 books in 2020. I’m almost done with two more books and I’m hoping to finish them before the end of the year, but it’s very likely life will intervene so we’ll see. Eleven of the books I read were in Braille. I really enjoyed so many of the books I read, and I can’t wait to share my favorite 2020 books with you after the new year.

My exercise plans were derailed by the pandemic, but I have continued the barre virtually, even though it’s not the same. I also didn’t blog as much as I intended, but this is a perennial concern for me. I did learn to make ice cream, and I’ve had a lot of fun practicing my cooking skills.

It’s been quite a year. I hope everyone is able to find some joy and peace as we bid 2020 goodbye and set off into 2021. I’m not planning to set any goals for myself in 2021. I’m just going to keep on doing my best and see where I land. So happy New Year! Here’s to 2021 being not 2020.