Woot!

Hey guys,

Not much going on right now, just plowing through my massive book list that I posted earlier this week, but I just wanted to share a little bit of good news: I got the job at Sephora! I'll undergo my training in September in and around school, and the job officially starts in October.

I hope everyone else has had as amazing a week as I've had!!

~Alexandra

Book Haul!

Hey guys,

So, you know how the makeup people on Youtube do hauls featuring all the new makeup and junk that they've bought? Well, I thought I'd do one, but with books. I went out on a second-hand book store raid today because we have a chain here in Calgary of second-hand book stores called Fair's Fair. I got it in my head that I wanted to find all of the Murdoch Mystery books. At the Fair's Fair, I found none. But, I came away a few things.

The first thing I grabbed from FF was another copy of Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden. I have a copy of this already, but I used it for my IB Extended Essay so it's all highlighted and marked up, so I decided I wanted a second copy, unmarked, for pleasure reading since this is my favourite book of all time.

Next thing I picked up was a book called Beijing Coma. I randomly found this on the shelf, so I've done no previous research on the novel, but it looks really good. From the back cover I've learned that it's about a guy who was shot in Tiananmen Square and is now blind, mute and paralyzed, but he can still hear. This one should be quite good.

We then went to Chapters and I managed to find the Murdoch Mystery books, but only picked up the first one, Except the Dying, because each one was $21. I've started this one and it's pretty good so far. I'll be struggling with the images of the characters because all that's in my head is the images of the actors, not the images being described to me. I'm bad at dissociating the images I've seen from those that I read, that's why my style is so descriptive, because I see the stories like a movie in my head. Anyway, back to the point.

I got a couple other books a few days ago, but since they're relatively new I'll put them in this haul too. The first one which I'm a currently reading alongside Except the Dying is a book called Lost in Shangri-La by Mitchell Zuckoff. I'll be honest, I picked this up only because it said "Shangri-La" on the cover and that happens to be the name of the latest Nazi Zombies map on Black Ops. However, this is a true story about a plane crash during WWII in which 3 survivors are, well, lost in Shangri-La. It's really well written and the story is actually really good, for non-fiction. I hope this is the kind of stuff I get to read in my non-fiction analysis class in the winter semester.

The last one I got was called The Tiger's Wife by Téa Obreht. The synopsis says it's about a young woman who's searching for clues to the only story that her grandfather never told her. Probably something about his past and the family's past. This one looks interesting, and the author is a very young woman and, being a young woman trying to get into the writing world myself, it would be beneficial to see what others in my position are putting out.

That concludes the haul, I'll probably end up talking more about these at some point as I get through reading them, so stay tuned for that. I think I'll do more book hauls in the future, that was kind of fun!

I hope you're all doing well!
~Alexandra

Something that's been bothering me...

Hey guys,

After my rather long winded post yesterday I actually managed to come up with some material for another one, though hopefully not as long winded.

My mom is a French teacher and is doing her PhD in second language acquisition. This basically means that she's obsessed with grammar and she taught me something that I have found to be beyond useful in both my writing and in my daily speech.

What I'm talking about is the "You and I" rule. Let me set the stage: my family watches Big Brother religiously every year and last year a girl came into the house named Rachel. She quickly fell in love with another house guest and subsequently formed an alliance with him. Every time she was talking about the game in the diary room she would say "Brendan and I." Which is all well and good except for the fact that she was punching out phrases like: "This is not going well for Brendan and I." Does that sound right? Not quite.

My mom, being the grammar genius, taught me a fool-proof method to getting this grammar rule right every time. Basically: if you can split the sentence in two and recreate the sentence using each subject and the resulting sentence is grammatically correct, then you've got the right subject.

Here's what I mean:

"This is not going well for Brendan and I." Now split this into two sentences:
"This is not going well for Brendan." Good.
"This is not going well for I." Not so good.

To fix the second sentence, simply replace "I" with "me".
"This is not going well for me."

Now put the sentences together again.
"This is not going well for Brendan and me."

Essentially, this grammar rule is quite simple: all that needs to be done is the second subject needs to fit the sentence if it were to stand on its own instead of being tacked to the first subject.

I really wish that this rule was better understood by the general public because after watching Rachel on Big Brother for 2 seasons now, the incorrectness of her speech is driving me up the wall.

I really hope that this helped some people.

Yours,
~Alexandra

Naming Places

Hey guys,

A friend of mine was asking me for help naming a city so I thought that it was a good basis for a post so here we have it: a post on naming places.

Cities

Cities are the most basic of settings: most stories take place in a city or near a major urban hub and that hub needs a name.

Some great tips that I've compiled are:

• New (Insert name of existing city here) - The reason I love this one so much is because it's easy to punch out a name fast if you need it. For instance, when they were naming the new world they came up with places such as "New York" (F.Y.I. New York city was originally named New Amsterdam). A fictional example of this method is the animated series "Class of the Titans" which I loved. The city's name was "New Olympia". Pick any city name, ancient or current, plop "New" in front of it and you've got a city.
• Suffixes - I love suffixes. There are so many to choose from because so many languages have variations that apply here. Examples: Russian "-grad" as in "Stalingrad", "Volgograd" and "Leningrad". German "-burg" as in "Hamburg", "Lauenburg" and "Aschaffenburg". English "-ham" as in "Nottingham", "Birmingham", and "Rotherham". Swedish "-holm" as in "Stockholm", "Ängelholm", and "Katrineholm". Just to name a few.
• Names - Combining any name with the suffixes above works well. For example: "Leningrad"- Lenin was a leader in Russia from 1917-1924.
• Folklore names - I especially like this one. In Alberta there's a town somewhere called "Orion". Greek mythology buffs such as myself will know that Orion was a hunter whose image was put in the stars by Zeus.
• Any combination of these options works well.

Provinces, Counties and Regions

In Canada alone there are several ways of naming our provinces. For example:

• Aboriginal words: "Saskatchewan" - swift flowing river
• People's names: "Alberta" - named after Princess Louise Caroline Alberta, daughter of Queen Victoria
• Physical location: "Northwest Territories"

In America, Native American naming schemes are common: "Dakota", "Alabama", "Alaska", "Kansas", and "Minnesota" to name a few. As well, the "New _____" scheme is popular: "New York", "New Jersey", and "New England" (although this last one is more of a territory, it's not an actual state).

Alternately, regions can be given any name and then add a geographical noun at the end. "Rhode Island" or "Long Island" for example.

Some provinces share a name with a city within the province: "Berlin, Berlin, Germany" or "Québec City, Québec, Canada".

Countries

Countries can be difficult, but not impossible. Here are some options:

• Aboriginal words: "Canada"
• Derived from a name: "Colombia", "America"
• Locations: "Ivory Coast", "Cape Verde", "Cayman Islands"
• "Republic of ________"/"Democratic Republic of ________"/"Federal Republic of _________" : "Republic of the Congo", "Democratic Republic of the Congo", "Federal Republic of Germany"
  
• "_________ Federation" : "Russian Federation"

If none of these work for you, you can try what I usually do: play around with sounds and syllables to get yourself started and then try tacking on something to round it out:

• "-land"
• "-ia"
• "-stan"

This is how I came up with "Klashiva"; I messed around with syllables until I found something I liked.

Place names are really very easy to come up with once you have the hang of it. If these ideas fail you, you can always try out seventhsanctum.com for more ideas. You can take they're ideas and mold them to fit your setting's needs.

I hope this has helped some of you out! Good luck!

Yours,
~Alexandra

Nervous

I applied for my first job yesterday. Not six hours later I got a call back asking for an interview today. It was a group interview, which I hadn't even heard of until yesterday. I think it went well. I applied for a position at the Sephora that's opening up at my mall in October. I'm so nervous now, though. I have this need for instant gratification and having to wait for nearly two weeks for an answer (I'll get called whether I'm hired or not) is going to kill me.

I'm now watching the Walking Dead while waiting out a thunder storm with my family.

So... basically this post was to let you know what I've been up to lately, nothing ground-breaking. Hope you're all doing well.

Yours,
~Alexandra

Success on the Klashiva front!

The title says it all this week, the Klashiva journey has finally begun. I've created my cast of characters for the protagonists, and I've also got the basis for the world society set out. I'm starting to map out the characters and I'm trying to figure out where the plot is now. I'm thinking I'm going to turn it into a serial because, from what I understand, a serial is kind of laid out like a TV series only in print. I'm pretty sure that's how I'll do it, because I don't think that there's one story to be told here, this world and these people have the potential for so much more than that.

Aside from that nothing much is going on. My cousin is in town for the week so we get to take her everywhere and show her things that are awesome here in Calgary. I feel like a tourist tagging along, it's interesting to see my city from that perspective which in all honesty is giving me a good lesson about perspective. I think I'm going to do a perspective post soon, because I have some thoughts on that that I'd like to share.

Anyway, I'll do that soon for you and until then I hope you're all well!
~Alexandra

Pancakes

Hey guys,

I was picked up by my archery coach this weekend to work for her father who was cooking all the food for the NALS (North American Longbow Safari) so that I could be his lacky. I took my brother and my best friend with me so we had a hell of a weekend cooking for nearly 200 hungry longbow archers. For the breakfasts we did pancakes so what have I been craving lately? Pancakes. I have made more pancakes in the last four days than I have ever made in my life. And frankly, I'm okay with this. However, I have decided that I need to invest in a flat-top griddle now, because the frying pan just isn't cutting it for my mass pancake production needs.

I got my down payment in for University yesterday, which means I have reserved my spot now and I'm good to go! I just need to pay my full tuition and go book shopping. I'm quite excited for this!

It's going to be an interesting week, it's my friend's 18th birthday and he's planning all kinds of shenanigans. We'll be going to the lake this Saturday, which has become a yearly tradition for his birthday, and we'll be hitting up the bar at some point. So far, I've been the only one over 18 so I haven't been to a bar yet. It would be tragic if I went to drink alone. Also, he's planning on going to the firing range, but I don't get to go because my cousin's coming to town. I'll have to go learn to shoot soon though, I think that would be excellent!

I don't have much in the way of writing to report just yet, I'm trying to wrap my head around the latest development in the Klashiva story which I touched on in my last post. I'm really trying hard to get this organized, I want to get this written soon.

That's all the news I have for you right now, I hope you're all doing well and I'll talk to you soon!
~Alexandra