#bookreview: The Space Between Worlds | Micaiah Johnson

The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Cara has a job not many can hold--traversing through different Earths in the multiverse--because most of her other selves are already dead. But technological advancements may mean Cara's job is invalidated--and her latest pull reveals unexpected events. What starts off as a simple multiverse-travelling story turns dark and complex when Cara uncovers dangerous truths.

The Space Between Worlds is perfect for casual sci-fi readers, those who prefer their sci-fi on the space opera/soft end of the spectrum and don't want to worry about the actual tech or How It All Works. Johnson doesn't actually explain how it works, just that it does, also providing a mythological response to this science: the traversers assigning the name "Nyame" to the pressure felt and dangers of traversing. It does segue more into myth at the end, so I'd say this is more science-fantasy than anything else.

Overall, the novel deals with the theme of rich vs poor, haves vs have-nots, and the way they impact each other individually and collectively. Cara is a Have-Not, only given this chance because of this unique quality of hers (still being alive on Earth 0); her Watcher, Dell, is a Have, born into money and Wiley City citizenship. There's a brutality that exists in the spaces outside the city, one that Cara cannot help that carry as part of her, affecting the way she reacts to people--especially Dell.

Dell, whom she is hopelessly in love with, but is sure does not love her back. A very strange kind of romance/non-romance exists between them, where it's increasingly obvious to the reader what Cara just cannot see (accept might be a better word).

Overall, The Space Between Worlds is fascinating with a slow-building intensity.

Note: I received a complimentary copy of this book from Hodder & Stoughton via Netgalley. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

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The Space Between Worlds releases on Aug 4. Preorder now (affiliate link)

#bookreview: Lead Like a Woman | Deborah Smith Pegues

Lead Like a Woman: Gain Confidence, Navigate Obstacles, Empower Others by Deborah Smith Pegues
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Lead Like A Woman is divided into two parts: 'Inherent Traits to Embrace and Manage' and 'Counterproductive Tendencies to Let Go'.

The entire book works on a generalising of "female traits and tendencies", whether it is a natural or taught one--this is helpful in some areas, not so helpful in others. Still, any book that addresses gender stereotypes will have to make generalisations. It's up to the reader to filter through which ones are applicable to their individual personality/makeup.

Deborah Smith Pegues brings a wealth of knowledge to the conversation, explaining how to utilise your natural strengths and tendencies in the workplace, whilst being aware of and working around your weaknesses. I especially liked the way she highlighted and challenged the way certain traits (nurturing, intuition, vulnerability) are seen as a liability--and demonstrated with examples how they can be utilised to bring positive impact to the workplace.

As a Christian book, each chapter quotes various scriptures and Pegues is also open about how her faith has impacted the way she does things and how she relies on God in many situations that arise.

The only disgruntlement I have is the fact that in some of the "tendencies to let go" the advice is still working around or catering to men's expectations in the workplace. That said, until the world really changes, it's the best you can do if you want to get ahead.

Note: I received a digital copy of this book from Harvest House Publishers via NetGalley. I was given the book with no expectation of a positive review and the review is my own.

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#bookreview: Creatures of Near Kingdoms | Zedeck Siew, Sharon Chin

Creatures of Near Kingdoms by Zedeck Siew
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Creatures of Near Kingdoms is a beautifully illustrated bestiary of Malaysian flora and fauna. Each one-page description is accompanied by a full-page illustration or lino print.

It's whimsical. And fantastic. And witty.

And occasionally confusing if you're trying too hard to figure out The Point.

It's best read in short bursts. Take it as a collection of microfiction, if you will.

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---

I'm lagging behind in my reviews because... idk. I'm playing catchup with work stuff that I can't delay because I'm clearing up my schedule. So the book reviews are the first to go.

Anyways, thought I might as well post this to make up for yesterday's missed post, even if it's not in the current review schedule (which is messed up).

#bookreview: The SEA is Ours: Tales of Steampunk Southeast Asia

The Sea Is Ours: Tales from Steampunk Southeast Asia by Jaymee Goh
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I suppose if I like half of an anthology, the anthology is a good one. I've been trying to find a way to review this more critically, but it just seems that I can't.

I suppose the dissonance comes from several things, the first of which primarily stems from the lack of steam in this version of steampunk. There's a quite a bit folklore/magic, sometimes used in combination with the technology; where it seems to grate (or at least confuse) are the bits where it seems to be substituted for the gears and clockwork. Either that or I'm not quite getting what they're trying to say.

The second is really a follow-on thought that a lot of SEAsian folklore tends towards horror and the macabre, which isn't what I enjoy reading. So whilst I enjoyed some of them, they turned out a little darker than I expected.

The stories almost all focus on a colonial past, on that space where history could have probably gone either way. This, I suppose, is already defined in the Introduction:

It was, and still is, imperative that we have volumes dedicated to our own voices, projects not of postcolonial melancholia, but decolonial determination. Our psyches cry for justice for lost names, lost stories, lost histories, all lost to globalized, systemic racism, lost to imperial dreams imposed upon us for too long. In the absence of time machines to recover them, we turn to re-creating, and creating anew. Thus, we use steampunk to have that conversation with our histories, our hearts and dreams.

I suppose i should end this updated review with some of the stories I enjoyed.

- The Last Aswang, Alessa Hinlo
-The Unmaking of the Cuadro Amoroso, Kate Osias
-Working Woman, Olivia Ho
-On the Consequence of Sound, Timothy Dimacali
-Spider Here, Robert Liow

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#bookreview: Daclaxvia: Book 1: Nascent | D. John Cliffson

Daclaxvia: Book 1: Nascent by D. John Cliffson

Daclaxvia: Nascent follows the three Manstead siblings and their dealings with angels and demons across the world (and out of it). First, there's Max, the genius, estranged, eldest child, an avowed atheist who is found wanting. Then there's Mark, the middle child who becomes one of the first Nascent-capable, Augmented Intelligence humans but is ambivalent in his faith. Finally, Meghan, the baby of the family, is the bleeding heart Christian who puts off university for missions work.

Part of the description is spot on--'Frank Peretti (This Present Darkness) meets C.S. Lewis (The Space Trilogy), "sci-fi-turns-spiritual" drama' fits this first novel well. On this count of premise and concept, it delivers. Like Peretti's work, angels and demons are physically present and active in the world--they inhabit other dimensions of the universe, but interact with humans via a fifth dimension that intersects with our world at various points. Cliffson then layers this with a Singularity-type concept of merging tech and DNA which turned out to be very intriguing, as well as disturbing. Cliffson presents it with all the related moral ambiguity, starting out with enhanced humans and ending with spiritual and ethical dilemmas of using (or misusing) such tech. (What, then, is a soul?)

Unfortunately, "heart-pounding" and "breathless" is the farthest away from this book that you can get. The entire novel is made up of infodumps interspersed with flashbacks, and a little bit of current action. This makes it super hard to get through and, honestly, a little difficult to understand. If you're not already a science geek (I'm not), you'll probably get very turned around halfway as to what on earth the dimensional and genetic stuff is actually supposed to do or mean. I can't actually decide whether this book was a little too hard-science for my taste (I've been known to skip technical descriptions in hard sci-fi books but still enjoy the story) or whether it really wasn't that technical, but just the way it was written made it confusing (it's not exactly handwaviumish enough to count as space opera-type soft sci-fi).

There's little in the way of organic character development. You're presented with a character doing something or facing an epiphany of sorts, and then there's a backstory infodump to tell you why the character is struggling with that (or not) and then it all moves along. The dialogue is often stilted and relies on a lot of repetition, which goes something like this:

A says, "such-and-such revelation."
Random confusion/flashback/infodump, including maybe a side-track from the conversation.
B replies, "Wait, so you mean such-and-such?"
A (or someone else in the scene) confirms it, often by repeating it.

It's very exhausting to read.

Being... Christian fiction, it does cover quite explicitly Christian faith issues plus conversion stories. This may be a plus or minus point depending on your own personal views. There's the usual appearance of Christian "relics", though not quite the holy grail.

Reading this would really be more for Cliffson's take on the Singularity, genetics, and multiple dimensions--plus the coming apocalypse--in an alternate world where faith really is by seeing. Though I guess if you really like very exposition-y books you may like this one.

Note: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the author as part of a review programme. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

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#musicmonday: The Only Thing Worse...

"Opinions are immunity to being told you're wrong"

#bookreview: Strange Ways | Gray Williams

Strange Ways by Gray Williams
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Strange Ways is a story of guilt and grief, and how you deal with them in an unjust world. It's about personal choices and political choices and taking the higher ground... or not... in a dark, gritty London full of illegal magic.

In some ways, Strange Ways can be read metaphorically. Amidst the Coleman family drama is the underlying question of justice for the oppressed; in this case, magic users. Karina Khurana appears in The End of the Line, but I don't remember much about her there. Here, she's much more central to the story--her political fight to legalise magic forms one of the core themes of this thriller.

'The slightest slip from me, just a frown or a clipped comment, and they analysed it. They picked it apart like it was evidence of something. I couldn't be tired or harassed or angry. Every time I let them get to me, I fed them just what they needed to point and say "there, that's her true nature, that's what they're all like."
... I tried so hard. I played by every rule. I talked, never argued. I debated but never shouted...'

In her fight for magic users' rights, Karina ends up having to act as a sort of "model minority" (model politician?), living under the scrutiny of the nation to prove that magic users are not inherently evil; magic can and is being used for good. As fiction, it's easy to skim over. Magic isn't real, after all. But there's always truth to fiction.

In our current living dystopia, the tension is real: when the laws (written or unwritten, constitutional or societal) are unjust and violence erupts (no matter who starts it or how it starts), where do you draw the line between continuing to claim the moral high ground (you must never give them grounds to accuse you) and retaliating to protect yourself (staying alive vs being a martyr)? Where's that turning point that says now it's okay for you to fight back, not just in words but in action? And once violence has started, who stops it? What's the best way to fight for a right? Do you keep playing by the rules? When do you throw the rules away and agitate for new ones?

In the midst of these charged times, these are especially important and pertinent questions. Violence isn't the answer, but sometimes violence can bring you to an answer. How this looks like in real life is what everyone needs to decide for themselves.

Williams explores this in how Amanda, Karina, Michaela and Steph react to the situations they find themselves in. There's no clear-cut right or wrong; like life, such decisions are messy and ambiguous--and often full of compromise. There's a divide between how the older generation react versus how the younger ones do. Yet the clearest chasm comes in Karina's accusation:

'You were willing to kill for what's important to you. Well, I'm willing to die for what's important to me.'

I'm probably overthinking this thriller, but that's what books are for. At any rate, I liked Strange Ways so much better than The End of the Line mostly because it's dealing solely with magic, and not the demonic aspect that was the core of the first book. Or so I tell myself.

Note: I received a complimentary copy of this book from Canelo via Netgalley. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

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#bookreview: Tales of Superhuman Powers: 55 Traditional Stories from Around the World

Tales of Superhuman Powers: 55 Traditional Stories from Around the World by Csenge Virág Zalka
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

If you're interested in how folk and fairy tales differ--or are the same!--around the world this is a good place to start.

The 55 tales are arranged around various superhuman powers, including shape-shifting, control of the elements, superstrength and mind-reading. Besides the tales themselves, Csenge provides some background to the stories and where they come from, as well as variants on the stories or similar stories from around the world. Being a storyteller, Csenge also includes the age the stories are appropriate for, plus adds in snippets of her experience telling these stories.

At points, the notes imply that Csenge has rewritten some of the stories, including merging several variants into a single story, or editing it down into a shorter version. I'd guess that she has also translated some of these from the original languages into English. As such, quite a few of the collected stories centre around Europe, with a focus on Hungary, but there's also a wide enough selection of stories from parts of Asia... including one from Malaysia!

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#musicmonday: Fall for Anything | The Script

(This wasn't exactly what Wilson Moy meant, but...)

#bookreview: Seen. Known. Loved: 5 Truths About God and Your Love Language | Gary Chapman, R York Moore

Seen. Known. Loved.: 5 Truths About God and Your Love Language by Gary Chapman
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I dunno. It's a really, really short book? 95-ish pages--at least based on the contents page of this e-ARC. My Kindle says its 51 minutes long (at my average reading speed), so more like a booklet.

Seen. Known. Loved: 5 Truths About God and Your Love Language rides on Chapman's earlier 5 Love Languages book(s), relating each love language to an expression of God's love. Although he (they?) explains a little bit about the five love languages in the first chapter, passing familiarity with the concept helps. I've never read any of those earlier books, but they're referenced enough in popular culture that I kinda know what they are. There's also a website quiz to discover your love languages that they refer you to.

Seeing that this rides on a whole series of books, I don't know that it presents anything new, other than that they tie it back to how you can receive and relate to God's love in each of the five love languages. While Chapman and York do quite well relating the five love languages back to God's love, I think the Physical Touch analogies kinda fail a little.

Overall, the book probably works more as a devotional or study group discussion to, uh, "unpack" the truths. Each chapter starts with a narrative, explaining the relevant love language with both generic (secular) stories and Christian ones (either current or from the Bible). The chapter closes with a "Refocus" section that directs you back to the God stuff and has either reflection questions or action items. On the other hand, coming from an angle of one who has been in church all her life, it reads rather evangelistic at points. Browsed again; based on the number of "if you have never", this book seems targetted at non-believers, or as church people would say, pre-believers.

Conclusion: this book is probably for people who already LOVE the 5 Love Languages brand and want to know how to relate it more to their lives or people who are trying to figure out this "God's love" thing.

Note: I received a complimentary copy of this book from Northfield Publishing via Netgalley. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

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#musicmonday: Love Moved First | Casting Crowns

Teenage keepsakes: a strange badge of honour

During the saga of the Strange Smell that turned out to be a Dead Rat Under The Staircase (a story I have not yet told and may probably never bother to tell), my mother cleared out all the stuff that had piled up in the storage area under the stairs. Most of this stuff is junk: old stationery, various wires from various appliances (and eras), decorative knick-knacks--the kind of stuff that you keep "just in case" and then find out that you'll never use again.

And then there was my woodwork project from school.

View this post on Instagram

My mum found my form 3 kh project and was thinking of throwing it away. Actually, looking at it again, I’m quite impressed. I think I should keep it. 😂

A post shared by Anna Tan (@annatsp) on May 21, 2020 at 7:23pm PDT

Well, then.

I remember hating this. Kemahiran Hidup (KH; Living Skills) was like the Worst Class Ever after Art and PJ (sports). Mostly because I'm terrible at working with my hands. And the problem with that is I'm also a bit of a perfectionist, and when something Just Won't Work I get this terrible urge to Destroy Everything In Sight (also why I hate art class).

So anyway, KH had like several components and you have to do a project for each one of them in Form 3 (Grade 9? idk the year you turn 15). Sewing was okay, I think (at least, I don't remember having any meltdowns, and I also don't even know what happened to that project) and Electronics was terrible (everything I soldered probably came out the next day lol but it wasn't as frustrating in general), but Woodwork was...

This is what I learnt:

1. I cannot saw straight (I can't even cut paper in a straight line with scissors so...)
2. I do not have the strength to saw through thick pieces of wood (I relied on help from the teacher and some classmates to actually cut through some of those chunks lol)
3. I cannot hammer straight either (this also relates to strength, plus being generally bad at angles)
4. Using sandpaper is slightly therapeutic, but also boring, and I have no patience 
5. I know I'm bad at art, but this also translates into not being able to shellac in nice, flat layers, leaving weird streaks and clumps.
6. I will never ever do woodwork again. 

If I'd found this ten years ago, I'd probably agree and junk it, but right now, it feels like a souvenir of my past--a hard-earned accomplishment made of my Blood and Sweat and Tears (there probably was blood). Right now, it feels like a badge of honour, if only because if it survived 20 years without falling apart, I probably did a better job of hammering than I thought I did.

Also, I probably did all the fancy stencil work to earn more marks for making it pretty because I was obviously going to lose a lot for the way the nails were bent and the joints aren't actually flush or even.

Anyways, it will look nice on my shelf and actually has a use!

#bookreview: Feathertide | Beth Cartwright

Feathertide by Beth Cartwright
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Marea was born with feathers and raised as a secret. When she turns eighteen, she sets out on a journey to find her father--only to find that it's also a journey of discovering and accepting herself.

Feathertide is a slow burn. A very, very slow burn. So slow in fact that the middle gets a bit boring, but the beginning and the end make up for it. They make up for almost everything. The trick, I think, is to read it all in one sitting. Once you stop somewhere, it's difficult to pick it up again.

There's nothing terribly new or exciting about Feathertide, honestly. It's a classic story of self-discovery, a coming-of-age without the excitement of knights and swords and kingdoms to wrest, just one of waiting and listening and asking questions. Marea sets out on her journey intent on finding the place where her parents met, hoping to find clues as to who her father is and why he left--and there she stays.

It's this unnatural stillness and lack of action that drags the story down--yet, it's this undefined longing and yearning that makes the story what it is. You really aren't picking up Feathertide for an exciting or twisty plot, you're picking it up for its beautiful prose and the raw emotions they draw from you. Cartwright captures the strong emotions and needs we all share no matter who we are--love and desire, belonging and acceptance, safety and shelter--and embodies it in Marea, the secret girl with feathers who doesn't know who she is or where she belongs. And as you journey with her, you hope that you too can find what you're looking for.

Feathertide is not for the restless; it's a book for quiet, for yearnings you cannot quite put into words, for those who need to just be for a little while.

Note: I received a complimentary copy of this book from Random House UK, Cornerstone via Netgalley. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

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#musicmonday: The Curse of the Faithful | Justin McRoberts

But the curse of the faithful
Is watching the ones they love go away.

I’m here. I’m always here



I’m here
I’m always here
I’m here because I choose to be
Despite all that’s been done to me
I don’t have much left that I could lose
So I’m here
And I’ll be here tomorrow, too.

(I've forgotten
Just how sweet Your
Mercies are Lord)

#bookreview: Sorrowfish | Anne C. Miles

Sorrowfish by Anne C. Miles

Where do I start with this?

Let's start with the star-rating. There is no star rating here because I do not know how to star it, but also inline with my updated rating system. For Amazon, I think I'll settle for a 3.5, pushing towards a 4. (Okay, I went to read through the guidelines for the review programme I got this book from, and realised I had to put a star for this on Goodreads as well. So that's now starred there too.)

It's really hard to define why.

Sorrowfish is an intriguing merged-worlds kind of story, where Sara Moore in Kentucky has waking dreams of a magical world and Dane in Canard is visited by a Fae. There are shades of Ted Dekker's The Complete Circle Series, where both worlds affect each other and Sara is the key to the overlap with her creative gifts.

I love the rich mythology Miles has created, with the World Tree and the Storm King, the Song and the dewin, the Fae and their bonding, gnomes and deemlings, the ties to earth and creative acts. It's all very beautiful and symbolic. Even the title, Sorrowfish takes on great meaning as you journey with Sara, Dane, and Trystan.

But to get there... Where some books have a great start and then let you down with a mediocre ending, Sorrowfish muddles through the beginning until you want to yell at it and then speeds up to a tense middle and an impressive ending. It's an awkward mix between just too slow to keep your attention and yet just too much that it's all so confusing. It's only somewhere midway when the various arcs really begin to overlap that things start to fall into place. But it's not quite an easy oh, that's what she means ding of understanding, more of a pfft, maybe I need to go and read the beginning again to figure this out... which is not quite a reaction I really like as a reader.
Maybe it's because it tries to follow three arcs at once and the correlation isn't really apparent until much later. There's just a little too much going on.

Writing-wise, there's just this odd thing about the sentence structures that makes me feel like everything is a tiny bit stilted. It's not anything really jarring or noticeable, more of an unsettled feeling while reading. I don't even know how to describe it. This is probably just me being nitpicky though (or still slightly in editor mode).
(Stupid aside: Miles uses "dan" in a name sort of like "son of", but "dan" in Malay is "and", so my bilingual brain keeps interpreting that as TWO PEOPLE.)

Overall, I think Sorrowfish is worth a read if you can get through the slightly confusing start.

Note: I received a digital copy of this book from the author. I was given the book with no expectation of a positive review and the review is my own.

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#musicmonday: Goodness of God | Bethel

This has been replaying in my head for a few days now.

All my life You have been faithful 

All my life You have been so, so good 

With every breath that I am able 

I will sing of the goodness of God

---

I have lived in the goodness of God

#bookreview: Getting Naked Later: Making Sense of the Unexpected Single Life | Kate Hurley

Getting Naked Later: Making Sense of the Unexpected Single Life by Kate Hurley
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

In Kate Hurley's bare-it-all memoir...

Not really. But Hurley has written the handbook of my life, the one where you run up against expectations about what your life was supposed to look like and try to make sense of how it actually does. Reading this book is like being known, which is no something that happens often to thirty-year-old singles in church.

My favourite chapter (obviously) is the one titled What Singles Wish Married People Knew because dammit if you'd stop saying those things, even in passing, maybe I wouldn't hurt as much. Or as often. Or decide that some days aren't worth going to church for (the weekends of Valentine's, or Mother's Day, or anything that could possibly head round to why-are-you-single-and-not-having-babies? or maybe-if-you'd-do-this-you'd-already-be-married). Hurley balances it out, of course, with follow up chapters titled What Married People Wish Singles Knew and What Divorced People Wish Everybody Knew.

I think the biggest thing about Getting Naked Later is the validation it brings--that I'm not the only one going through this alone, I'm not the only one struggling with these thoughts, that you know what, it's okay to struggle through this and not be okay. It's okay to be not okay.

It's not all gloom-and-doom. Amidst the soul-crushing pain, Hurley is both hilarious, and hopeful. And it's more than just the hope of a husband-to-come, it's the hope of a God-Who-Is and a Community-That-Can-Be.

---
I received a complimentary copy of this book from Harvest House via Netgalley. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

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So how long does it take to write a book?

Alright, while I'm busy procrastinating on Labour Day, here's a quick look at how long it actually took to write the first draft of The Weight of Secrets, or as I call it, "Hostage".

Why? Because I like stats and I like numbers and playing around with data is fun. LOL.
Also, it helps me figure out what works and doesn't work for me, so that the next time I start a project, I can uh, plan. appropriately. Or something.

So how did it go overall?

Look at that! My original target was to quick draft it in 2 months, from February to March. OBVIOUSLY, no writing got done in February. I did start the first 1K like on Feb 24 or something, but let's disregard that. Well, I still did write it in two months, March and April, so I'll call that a win.

And then after a good start in March, it plateaued again like forever before it picked up again. Um, I don't exactly remember why, but probably because I was either a) doing paid projects to actually earn money or b) lazy.

Most likely lazy. Oh wait, Feb & March was when I was working on the Agape & TMRD scripts.

As my daily word count shows, I'm not very good at writing every day. I already figured this out last year when I was working on Berserker (The Weight of Strength). Whether it was for the NaNoWriMo vomit draft or the actually paced-and-plotted rewrite for my dissertation, the best I could do was write on alternate days. It's as if my brain needs a day to recover, especially if I write anything over 2K a day. Who knew?!

Hence the random spurts. If you track the dates (which aren't actually showing on the graph, idk why), you'll find that most of my writing is done on Monday. Which is when I run writing sprints for MYWriters Penang now that we don't get to meet in LUMA for our write-ins. Actually, half the time I'm sprinting by myself, but that's all cool.

I've discovered sprinting on Discord so I get trophies (even if I'm the only one competing), stats and levels. :p

The NaNoWriMo site covers a lot of info if you write with their timer, which is how I've confirmed that I'm a night owl. (Nothing new there).

But because I also want to look at my own stats, I downloaded info off my Toggl tracker to see how many hours I actually wrote over these two-ish months. The info isn't 100% accurate because sometimes I forget to turn it on and sometimes it's on, but I'm just like rewriting the same few sentences over and over again, but most of the sessions are there.

Here are the stats:

I spent 87.5 hours in total writing this beast! That's 87.5 hours for 81K words, so an average of 925 words an hour. 

That's a slight variance from NaNoWriMo's 1,140 words per hour (19wpm x 60 mins), but the average 1K per hour is roughly correct. In all likelihood, the Toggle data is more accurate, because I also track time the time I spend light editing the previous chapters to help me get started. I only turn on the NaNoWriMo tracker when I'm ready to sprint. 

In terms of when I wrote, yup, I wrote the most often in the evening, but surprisingly I wrote quite a lot at 2pm as well. This is just the time I started (count of description) and the total hours written in that session (sum of duration) and doesn't tell you how productive those sessions were.

So, how long does it take to write a book?
Approximately 95 hours over 2 months. 

Or if you're mad enough to cram it into an actual 40-day work week, you could be done in... 2.5 weeks.

This is just the first draft, though.
Next, I have to edit it for all the things I set aside and said "I'll fix this in edits".

I'm not going to start editing until at least June.
HMMM maybe that'll be my CampNaNo goal.

X Marks the Spot #AtoZChallenge

X marks the spot.

Here you'll find buried treasure.

Buried--
so deep you'll never find it again.
Dreams and visions
longings and yearnings all
dead and buried.
Gone up in flames,
ashes.
Ashes and dust,
from dust you came, to dust you return.
Ashes on your tongue from the dreams you've given up,
Dead,
--buried.

Treasure--
once sought after but now forgotten.
All that glitters isn't gold,
but this gold dust you scattered on what you once loved
is gone.
Leaving nothing
but a mirage of
baubles that were gems,
gilded frames,
but nothing of worth, fake
--treasure.

Here you'll find treasure, buried treasure,
the ashes of dreams
and their once-gilded frames.

X.

#musicmonday: W is for Waymaker #AtoZChallenge

I'm not quite back, but here's a half-hearted attempt to get one more entry in. lol.

Phil Wickham makes everything better.