Changes & Making a To Read Pile

I'm expanding my blogging here from just book reviews to all sorts of non-sense about books, reading, writing, and the life surrounding it. I hope you enjoy it and stick around.

Recently, I've become affiliated with NerdSpan.com as a book reviewer. You can read my first review of Ship of Magic by Robin Hobb here (or simply look in the previous post for part of the review and a link). I've won some free books from Goodreads.com and really like their First Reads program. I'm just now finishing up my first book, Killmaiden's Compendium of Uncommon Occurences by James A Shapiro. I'll post a review later on.

I received a bunch of gift cards for Christmas and guess what? I spent it mostly on books. (Shocker, right?)

My haul (and books I intend to review):

Beautiful Darkness by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl

Cinder by Marissa Meyer

Changeling by Philippa Gregory

Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion

Swamplandia! by Karen Russell

The Illumination by Kevin Brockmeier

Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day by Ben Loory

Sweet! Expect a review of Beautiful Creatures up on NerdSpan soon (I'll also post an excerpt here), followed by Killmaiden's and others. I don't know what I'm reading next. Probably Warm Bodies in anticipation of the movie. :)

I also wanted to talk about my recent applications to grad school for creative writing. I graduated with a Master of Arts in Teaching in May 2012. I didn't find a job, but I have been subbing off and on. It's fun, but not as fulfilling as I'd hoped. I'm sure it would be if a had a full-time gig, but that hasn't panned out yet.

So I applied to four MFA programs (Master of Fine Arts) at University of Alabama, University of Mississippi, Oregon State University, and McNeese State University. Originally I had only wanted to apply to Alabama, but some people on the Draft pointed out that applying to multiple places will slightly increase my chance of being accepted somewhere, and also make those rejections hurt less. Or so I hope. I'll keep you updated on the status of those applications as I receive them. I should hear back from all schools by the end of March.

So while I'm waiting, I've been working on some ideas for novels along the way. It's mostly YA or even adult fantasy, but we'll see. I've been working on something slightly sci-fi lately and I think it's going pretty well. I need to work on it a bit more this weekend.

Well, I think that's all for now. Until next time, guys!

Keep reading.

A Darling Novella