Katie Runyon

Merry Christmas everyone. I hope that everyone’s Christmas is happy and safe, and your relatives are only slightly annoying :). Thankfully, I will be spending Christmas Eve and Christmas with people I love and whose company I enjoy. I know there will not be a white Christmas here, only a chance of a gray one. Well enjoy your holiday.

Unfortunately, I had no choice but to change the blog to members only. I spent most of the day weeding through the comments, deleting hundreds of spam. I am hoping making it members only will keep away most of the spam. I am working on the layout right now so once I am done, I will try to intergrade it with the rest of the site. Sorry if anyone’s comments were deleted in all the chaos, there was too many to look through them all thoroughly. When I say “members only” I mean that only people who are registered and logged in can leave comments. I will let everyone know when/if the blog is intergraded and any other unexpected things that pop up with the blog. If you haven’t noticed, I also tried to put all the entries into a category. I tried to put them in the one that seemed to fit best, but most are a mixture. So if there is something you are looking for, try the search or emailing me.

UPDATE:
Well I was able to intergrade the blog with the forum, so now you should have the same login for the whole site still. I also added a new link to my yahoo group. I’m sure I will still be working on the layout of the blog, so please bear with me.

Well, I just finished another book so I should start some reviews before I get too far behind. So first, I will start with George R. R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones. It was a spectacular read and was very inspiring. My favorite character was Arya (which seems to be a popular name, which we will get to later). There is just something about her fierceness and strength that I find attractive I guess. I will not spoil anything for those who have yet to read it, but I was surprised and saddened when one of the main characters died. I was not expecting them to actually kill him and I even checked forward to see if his name came in a chapter heading later because he somehow was not dead. I was just waiting for them to jump out and shout “surprise”. The story surrounding what is going on beyond the wall is interesting and I am looking forward to seeing what happens when Jon and the rest venture out into the Haunted Woods. Overall, I really enjoyed the book and will buy the other three novels that go along with it as soon as I can.

Now as for Anne McCaffrey’s The Girl Who Heard Dragons, some of you might be having a good laugh at my ignorance and if not, you will soon see why. I read the first of what I thought where chapters and then moved on to the next, where I was totally lost but figured it would make sense in the next one. As I began to read the first few lines, it began to sink in that something was wrong. I paged through the book, looking for the name if the girl in the first chapter. After not finding it, I began to search amazon.com for the book and to my surprise, I found it was not a full-fledged novel. It seems it is a collection of short stories. Of course, I was dumbfounded and partly enraged. I am not a fan of short stories; I like things to be a little drawn out and exciting. I was VERY upset when I realized my folly. The only place I could see in the book that it said anything of it being a collection, was in a quick review on one of the pages. Of course, it was through no fault of the author, but I wished I had a little more warning before I bought it. Anne McCaffrey still writes very well and I plan to buy one of her novels, but I will be more thorough next time. I can at least say that after the first few pages, the first short story picked up nicely and I was reading eagerly. When the second came along, I was totally lost. If anyone reads Anne McCaffrey and knows of the first story with the little girl named Aramina, maybe you could inform me of an actual novel that includes her or something like it. I have no idea where to start.

Anyway, on the other book I actually finished that was a full novel. I just finished Christopher Paolini’s Eragon a few minutes ago. It was an interesting read, more the style of my novel then George R. R. Martin’s. When reading I was trying to pay attention to the writing style to get a feel for it. The story flows nicely and keeps you entertained. Most of the fantasy books I have read go back and forth between different characters, as do mine. It was a nice change to have one characters point of view during the whole thing. You connect with the one character and grow attached to him. You also become attached to the dragon, Saphira because she is almost a part of Eragon. I am now eagerly waiting to read Eldest as with the rest of the A Song of Ice and Fire series.

Well it seems next year will be a busy time with reading and writing, at least I will keep my brain active.

Well I received a lot of good comments/critiques from Critique Circle members (thanks guys/girls). Of course I could not wait to put those to good use; so yesterday I went about going through each critique and seeing what I could do about the problems that were pointed out. I have yet to fully read through it again and again, but at least some of it is done. I added a good amount to the chapter and am happy I decided to submit it. I don’t know how many chapters I will be doing this with, but I KNOW I will eventually be submitting my second chapter.

Not much in other news, but I am almost finished with A Game of Thrones (hopefully finished by the end of the week) and sometime after will be posting a quick review. I have a few other books to move onto and am enjoying moving at a slow pace, making sure I absorb all the pleasantries.

Well after a day of bearing the freezing cold while I untangled..I mean put up…the Christmas lights, I was surfing around and decided I wanted my own little place to exchange my ideas with other authors and maybe even get some opinions on what I have so far. So I thought the best place to try would be, Yahoo! So I have just created a group for writers. It is a public group, but you will have more things to access if you are a member. My group is appropriately titled Katie Runyon Writing Group. Feel free to check it out and say hi.

As a reminder, if you haven’t read the last post. My first chapter is up on Critique Circle and I have so far received two nice critiques. Hopefully I will get more by the time it is moved aside to make room for others (Wednesday). So hurry while it is up and at least take a look.

My chapter is up on Critique Circle and will be up until the 12th, Tuesday. You can find my chapter here. Even if you do not wish to critique it, you have a chance to read the full first chapter. If you do wish to critique it, then you will have to sign up. It is quick and the site has a lot of tools and resources for you to use. So please stop by and check it out.

With some of the money I received for my birthday, I decided to broaden my fantasy range. I have religiously read Terry Goodkind and Raymond E. Feist. I figured it was time to try out some other authors. I have Robert Jordan’s Crossroads of Twilight, but I didn’t get too far. It was a while ago when I read it and was hard to keep track of everyone and jump right in so far into the series. I used the glossary in the book quite often and after a while, I just gave up.

On my birthday I went to Barnes & Noble to check out their fantasy isle. There was a lot to choose from so I began looking for names that sounded familiar. I came across George R. R. Martin and remembering his name from somewhere, I checked them out. When you have fantasy authors, there are usually series, so I tried to find the first of at least one of the series. I found A Game of Thrones and read the first few paragraphs. Recently when reading things I need something to catch my attention in the first few lines in order to want to read more. This book did just that, so I decided to buy it.

Next, I went looking for yet another fantasy author. I wanted to try a girl out and I came across Anne McCaffrey. I remember receiving one of her books when I was younger and reading some. Back then, I was not into reading and from what I remember it seemed like it must have been one of the later books in a series, because it was hard to know what was going on when it began. When I tried to find a first from one of the series, I was having some trouble. The best I could find was The Girl Who Heard Dragons, which by the list on the inside seemed to be the second of the series (I will have to research that), Coelura was the first on the list but was not there. I decided to go with it, by the title it seems a girl will be the main character and that was another good point for me.

When I got to the register, I was told that George R. R. Martin was great and I should buy all four of the books from the series because I wouldn’t be able to put them down. I guess for now I will have to live with the one and see how it goes. Whenever I finish those two books, I am sure I will add reviews for both of them.

I hope that it will not be too long before I am able to write another blog entry.