The Most Beautiful Bookshop in the World

In October, I had the absolute pleasure of spending my birthday in Italy. We visited Rome, Florence, Venice, Milan, Como, Bellagio and Turin… and it was probably the best 11 days of my life, even though right now it almost feels like one beautiful dream.

Venice was my favourite. Words cannot describe how charming it is, from its water canals to its narrow cobblestone streets and old houses and gondolas… I was and still am absolutely in love. Our hotel was right on the Grand Canal, and we had the most amazing view from our balcony.

The golden sunrise casting its rays on the rooftops and water.

We went off the “beaten path”, so to say. Though we explored the typical tourist sites like the Doge Palace and Piazza San Marco and most of the popular bridges, we found ourselves trudging through empty alleyways and stepping inside the loveliest shops, filled with carnival masks and calligraphy pens and inks and… sigh.

What Translators Can and Can’t Do

I watched “Arrival” this weekend. For the uninitiated, it is a movie about aliens arriving on Earth and the world’s attempts at communicating with them. The main character, Louise Banks, is supposedly one of the best linguists in the world, a translator whose work has greatly helped the United States, and naturally she is recruited to translate the alien language. Whether I liked this movie or not is besides the point, what I want to address in this post is the portrayal of Loiuse.

While I’m absolutely thrilled that there’s a movie that paints us translators as the real MVPs (because let’s face it, we’re not the most exciting bunch around), and sheds light on the importance of languages… during run time, I was just thinking, “Um. That’s… not how translation works?” Now that some time has passed since I watched it, I think I can finally put my finger down on what was bothering me.

Translators can translate one language into the other, provided that they do know both languages before hand. 

Translators cannot translate a language that, until two days ago, had not existed and there is no record of it anywhere. They cannot be expected to translate anything that is given to them. They are not walking dictionaries, for goodness sake. I was absolutely baffled when the MC was approached with some voice recording and asked to translate it. Like… are you even for real? 

Writing is dangerous. No, really – it is.

Last week, I woke up with an intense pain in my thumb and an overall numbness in my hand. To say I freaked out would be an understatement, especially since I was totally fine when I went to bed the previous night. In fact, I was more than fine; I was writing.

I had a new idea, a post-apocalyptic novel with flying islands and metal dragons and this really badass heroine. I was – and still am – super stoked about it… so stoked that I decided I must write it by hand. A fantasy novel, possibly a trilogy, fully written by hand… I must be insane, right? Bit of a background here, though: nine or ten years ago, I used to write everything by hand. I had notebooks upon notebooks filled with stories. Then I bought a laptop and it seemed more convenient to just type them in right away, from the comfort of my bed, no notebook balancing needed. I didn’t abandon my penmanship completely – I still brainstormed on paper, I still had some journals… but I was no longer writing for prolonged periods of time.

I think, in those years, my hand sorta forgot what it was like, writing full-blown novels, assuming it had completely passed on the baton to the tips of my fingers. So it was in for a rude awakening when I made it write 30+ pages in 3 days, and it retaliated by giving me my own rude awakening. Quite literally. 

Happy International Chocolate Day!

It’s that time of the year again, the day when I kick my chocoholism up a notch and share mouth-watering pictures of my eating adventures with the lot of you. I’ve actually been so eagerly awaiting this day that I started celebrating a day early!

I went to a lovely little place called Cocoa Kitchen, which incorporates chocolate in all its dishes and drinks. Started off with a lemon mint drink sprinkled with cocoa nib, followed by butternut squash cocoa ravioli. And I mean cocoa ravioli. The pasta was actually made of chocolate and it was so weird and interesting and I’m 95% sure I liked it, haha.

Everything should have chocolate in it. Everything.

Potter on a Pedestal

On Sunday, 31st of July, at 3:15 a.m. I wrapped my hands around a fresh new copy of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. My friend and I attended the launch/Harry Potter birthday party, did a meet and greet with Hagrid, stayed out of Snape’s path, gorged on some wizarding candy… then waited patiently until the UK midnight release.

The best thing about this picture is my Hogwarts Express ticket. Okay and the Hogwarts journal. Okay okay and my House colours. xD

It was a work night and I went to the office on less than three hours of sleep, but you know, I didn’t mind because the party was quite fun and I thought it would be all worth it when I got home and sank into the book with a cup of piping hot tea.

It wasn’t. [This is a spoiler-free post; can’t vouch for comments though!]

A Random Freebie Has Appeared!

So… apparently I had scheduled a 2-day promotion for my book for the 13th and 14th of July, and then promptly forgot about it. Goes to show what a serious writer I am – not only am I absolutely neglectful blogging-wise, I don’t even remember my own events. Been too busy running around catching Pokemon and bumping into walls to keep track of things, haha.

Anyway. I know by now most of my followers have grabbed free copies, but in case you missed any of my previous promos, you can get download it today and tomorrow from Kindle for free!

If for some reason you can’t use Kindle, shoot me a message through my contact form and let me know which file format works best for you.

And if it’s not too much trouble, please share! 🙂

Back to Ink and Paper

Inky hands, correction pen stains, crumpled up paper, doodles on the corners… that was more or less my perpetual state as a writer when I was younger. Then computers came along and I migrated to the digital forms of writing, leaving my notebooks behind to collect dust while I sang the praises of Microsoft Word, with its pristine fonts and formatting options and the ability to start over and delete words with the click of a button.

Lately, however, I have been having difficulty even coming up with words to delete.

To be fair, when I was younger, I never had to approach a computer screen with a work mentality – it was a tool for fun and procrastination, but now I mostly associate it with translation and proofreading. I was also not involved with the Internet as I am now, and knew only a handful of websites. Social media wasn’t rampant, and my attention wasn’t diverted every few seconds by new tweets, Instagram posts, blogs, videos and forum replies.

I knew I needed to take a step back if I were ever to pull myself out of this neverending loop of distraction, disconnect a bit from my laptop, build my focus… and so I decided to go back to the basics. I think I went too far back though, because I bought myself a typewriter.

I cannot get over how beautiful it is.

Level Up

I turned 27 last October, and try as I might to pretend that age is just a number and you’re only as old as you feel (20!), I still can’t deny that my thirties are just around the corner. I don’t like it. The 20 landmark was awesome, but the 30 one… not so much. No offense to any readers older than 30! You’re all wonderful people, but this is just something I’m trying to handle on a personal level.

So recently my friends and I adopted a particular system. As of this year, we are no longer “aging”. We are leveling up.

Of course this came with a whole new set of rules and variables. In the game of life we’re now playing, things like eating and sleeping have a whole new meaning. 

Sanderson’s Laws of Fantasy Writing

Today I had the privilege of meeting the wonderful Brandon Sanderson a second time. I wish I could say I didn’t fangirl again, but I did. I was so in awe of this man that I completely forgot any and all questions I wanted to ask him. Got three of my books signed though, and got a tiny pep talk from him when I told him my dreams of winning a writing competition were crushed a couple of hours earlier – cheered me up right away.

God I will forever treasure these books.

But anyway.

I didn’t just meet Sanderson the author, I also met Sanderson the professor. And he was brilliant. I wish I had him as a teacher back when I was still in school. The workshop we had him was titled, “Sanderson’s Laws of Fantasy Writing”, and it was really quite enlightening. The laws are applicable not just to fantasy, of course, and the wisdom should really be shared. This is all paraphrasing of course, and I’m just relying on my notes here!

Onto the laws!

Of Writing Robots & Lazy Humans

Procrastination Station took me to Reddit today (as it often does), where I came across a 2-week old AMA (a Q&A sort of thing where anyone can ask the poster of the thread anything) by R. L. Stine, whose books I’m sure have kept many of you up at night on more than one occasion, and one person was asking him about his writing process.

24 BOOKS IN ONE YEAR? Holy crap. Okay, so Goosebumps and Fear Street books aren’t that lengthy, but it is still amazing to me that  one can be so productive with their writing and keep up a constant stream of ideas. The last book I finished writing was 2 years ago. Last year I only was able to squeeze out 15 thousand words. I just… wow.