My musings, however orderly or disorganized they happen to be, about all things fiction and fantasy related. Reading, writing, craft, you name it. And sometimes, the relevance might not be immediately obvious, but I assure you, it will always tie in somehow (and you’ll see how if you read the whole post) into how I write, what I write, or what and how I like to read. Or both, more likely.
February is sort of an annoying month sometimes. Not that I mind the time of year. But all the romance stuff always annoys me, especially since a lot of people use the word 'love' as a synonym for romance. Which brings me to the main post of this post. Several years ago, I decided to …
Continue reading Raina’s Fantastic Ramblings: Why Did I Name My Blog/Website “Enthralled By Love”?
“Research, and get your research right.” “What's the most recent thing you researched for your novel?” What if that research is wrong? This question is posed by the fact that I happen to have some first-hand experience with … horses. And I was recently reading a book where someone who had recently been turned into …
Continue reading Raina’s Fantastic Ramblings: On Some of the Limits of Research in Fantasy
I don't rate my reviews. At first, all I knew about why I decided not to rate my reviews, and to (with occasional exceptions) only post reviews to my blog (which I can do whatever I want with) and to sites that don't require ratings, was that I could never decide what I wanted to …
Continue reading Raina’s Fantastic Ramblings: Why I Don’t Rate Books I Read
Hello. So far, I've tried to write something about stories or in some way related to fiction, whether my own or others, for these every-other-monday posts. However, sometimes I just can't get myself to write any decent nonfiction. So here's a bit of flash fiction. No, it doesn't have anything to do with any of …
Continue reading Raina’s Fantastic Ramblings: A Flash Fiction – Shards of Hope
I'd always understood the phrase 'character development' a certain way, but a while ago I read a review of a certain book I had also read (which review and book is not, I think, necessary to this post), which complained of poor character development in the novel. Specifically, what was considered to be poor character …
Continue reading Raina’s Fantastic Ramblings: What Does ‘Character Development’ Mean?
Everyone has heard of mood readers. Well, maybe not everyone. But a lot of people. Basically, some (many?) readers like different kinds of books when they are in different moods. Those of us who read like this often start many books, and take a very long time to finish many of them, if we ever …
Continue reading Raina’s Fantastic Ramblings: Have You Ever Heard of – Wait for it! – Mood Writing?
I am currently taking an adventure in writing a story from a perspective type I haven't really done before. Most of my novels are written in what I think is called storytellers: something with elements of both omniscent/near-omniscient and a deep 3rd, common in many of the novels I've read from a couple decades ago. …
This one is likely to be a little short, since I have been busy lately preparing some books to be published (or re-published), and have not kept ahead of things. So, today I'm just going to talk a little about something that has been on my mind: how writing stories has broadened my appreciation of …
Continue reading Raina’s Fantastic Ramblings: Discovering Beauty Through World-building
I'm not quite sure how I'm going to go about writing on this topic, even though I've been wanting to for a long time. There's a reason I write – and read – fiction. I think – and articulate – much better in fiction, or at least using fiction. And that means it's much harder …
Continue reading Raina’s Fantastic Ramblings: A Different Approach to Right vrs. Wrong
I think The Lord of the Rings and the Silmarillion – not so much The Hobbit – are pretty close to grimdark, or maybe dark. The way people use those two words sometimes gets me a bit confused. I don't think they're exceptionally gory or violent. But I do think they are definitely not about …
Enthralled By Love 