Progress Post: Week 30

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Hello and welcome to week 30 of my author vlog for year 2023. Today I’ve got some exciting news. I’ve also got some books to talk about and let’s get started. Hi, my name is Danielle Forrest. I’m an alien romance author, and on this channel I do videos about myself, my writing, and anything related to those topics. Today as I said, is an author vlog, which means I’m going to give a progress report on where I’m at with the projects I’m working on, what I’m working on for my author sphere stuff in general, and some of the reading I’ve been doing. As for progress, the second episode of Fated Mates of the Drakoan is live on the free sites, so that would be Dreame and Inkitt. Episode 2 will be live on YouTube on Saturday is my plan. I’m also planning to have Episode 7 live on Ream, which is my subscription site on Friday. That’s the plan for that. It’s not quite finished yet as of the recording of this video, but it is almost done. It’s going to take maybe a half an hour to an hour to finish. Additionally, Episode 8 is a lot further along than I thought it was at this point.

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I was in the middle of editing Episode 7 when I realized it was really long. Then I realized the reason it was so long is because it was actually two episodes and I had mushed them together. That’s a thing. I ended up splitting it into two episodes. Now it’s Episode 7 and Episode 8. Episode 7 is 2.2 or 2.5 thousand words. Episode 8 is just under 1.5. It’s a little short on episode 8, but I do think it gives it a more comprehensive feel to it and it’s connected better. Overall, I think the experience is better that way anyway. It does mean that I’ll actually, I’m not as far behind as I thought I was. That’s a thing. Another Ream update is I have Shifting Shadows is now live on Ream. If you are in the eBook Lover tier, which nobody’s in the eBook Lover tier yet, but anyone who’s in the eBook Lover tier would get that book for free. Same with Shifting Loot and a few other books that are also available for free with my mailing list. Another update is on Sunday, my video on why I wrote a trans character in Shifting Tides, that one is live.

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Feel free to check that out. I might put a card if I remember on the screen somewhere, so you can check that video out. Beyond that, we can get into what I’ve been reading. I read two books that I care to actually mention this week. I read some absolute garbage, but these two are ones that are actually worth talking about. So the first is I finally finished Girl, Serpent, Thorn by Melissa Bashardoust. I’m thinking about doing a video on that one. So that will be a separate video where I do a full book review on what I felt about it. I’ve definitely got some thoughts. I’ve definitely got some feels with regard to that book. I’m going to go into that in more depth. The other book I read was His Human Widow by Michele Mills. And this is an author that I read on a regular basis. I pretty much religiously read all of her Hyrrokin books, which I love them. They’re great and they’re frustrating at the same time. So to give you a little bit of what I thought of the book. Some pet peeves I had with the book was, first off, constantly repeating the same information over and over again.

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I mean, the amount of times that she, in this book, has the male main character tell people, and sometimes the same people, telling the same person twice in different conversations about how he was captured and kept in prison and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. He goes into so much detail every single time. It’s such unnatural communication styles. People talk like this. They never talk like this. I don’t understand it. I do not know why she does this, but she does it in every single book. I should probably do a video on what I love and what I hate about… Because it’s definitely this love hate relationship with me and her writing. But the way she does dialog is really weird sometimes. Sometimes it’s like she info dumps in dialog, only she does it multiple times. Like I said, the amount of times that she says the same narrative of why he was missing for two years is breathtaking. It’s just breathtaking. It’s all the fricking time. I do not understand why she does it. There’s no reason to do it. It’s not how people talk. Yeah, he’s an alien, but still, it’s weird. There’s also some minor editing mistakes, which most of the time I just don’t care.

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There was one example where it actually changed the meaning of the sentence, and I know what she meant, but again, not a huge issue. There was also a more egregious mistake was her writing things that actually broke the point of view. A great example is there’s this one scene where he’s talking with someone else. It’s in her point of view. It’s in the female main character’s point of view at that point. She’s eating fire scones, which don’t even get me started on her putting fire and flame, etc. into the name of everything in the book. It’s just weird. It’s not even It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. But the POV character is the female main character, and yet you have this conversation going on between the male main character and another character that she’s not paying attention to. There’s a point where she’s actually like, What do you do? What are you two talking about? What? You just had her, according to this POV, listening to every single conversation, every single word that they just said back and forth, and then you’re going to make it look like she wasn’t paying attention? It’s in first person point of view.

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This is not third person where maybe it’s omniscient or objective or something like that. No, it’s in first person. That’s not how first person point of view works. I’m sorry, it’s just not. And lastly, there was a little bit of something where it’s just some bad writing as far as I’m concerned. There was a passage I remember specifically, which I actually quoted on Kindle, which was, and this is the quote, if you stay with him during lockdown, you’ll instantly become pregnant. And my brain was just thinking, that just sounds like really bad erotica. I swear I’ve probably read erotica that had a line like that. Trust me, this is the type of book… That would be the type of book where you’re reading it and you’re pretty sure no one has edited it, even the author. To see that in a book that looks pretty well put together for the most part is, like I said, I love the Hyrrokins. I religiously read her books, but she’s a guilty pleasure. Not going to lie, her books are definitely a guilty pleasure because it is not the greatest writing I’ve ever seen. Not even close. Another thing that I made a note of is there’s a creature called a wulver, which is a pet.

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These creatures have three heads. There’s a scene where each head was chewing on a different bone. This so much took me out of the story because I’m thinking of every single time that I’ve had a dog who was chewing on a bone. I’ve had a lot of dogs in my life. I have seen plenty of them chewing on bones. I’m going to say this, every single time I have seen a dog chewing on a bone, they’re holding the bone with their front claws. They don’t just gnaw on it in the middle of the air. They are holding it steady so they can really get some good leverage on that bone. My brain was like, Okay, I’m trying to imagine this creature trying to hold or chew on three bones at once when it doesn’t have enough limbs to hold it steady, hold them steady. I’m like, This doesn’t work. This does not compute. It just completely took me out of the story. It’s such a silly, pedantic thing. But at the same time, it definitely was something that was a little bit of a pet peeve for me. Then moving on to some of the fun bits, the funny bits.

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There’s one, and I’m going to quote two different things here. The first quote was, Oops, my hand slipped and I hit the communication button. I just smiled so hard when she said this. I was like, Yeah, oops, my bad. I didn’t mean to do that. Totally did, but didn’t mean to do it. I got a kick out of it. I thought that was cute. And then the second passage was, If you get in touch with Marcus, you’ll see there’s an exit plan for me in case I ever needed to leave. He might have even thought up a plan in the event that you returned because remember, he always held out the hope that you weren’t really dead. You could just, No. Byron punches his pillow. You will stay with me tonight. I will sleep. Turn off the light, he orders and then closes his eyes. Then she mutters, grouchy, grouchy. I thought that was so cute. I thought it was adorable. But anyway, that’s the last of what I have. Anyway, that’s the last of what I have today. I will see you again soon. Thank you for watching my video to the end. If you liked it, consider subscribing and hitting the bell if you want to receive notifications.

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You will find a video to watch on the screen. You can find ways of getting in touch with me or engaging with my content more fully on other platforms in the description of the video. Until next time, bye.