I love fan fiction! I don't care what anybody says, even if Fifty Shades of Grey is a fan fiction of Twilight, it's still literature on its own, even if it is erotic. Fan fiction is like the candy of the book world. It can be sugary, sweet, salty, bitter or it can be all of them combined, but it always reminds you of something else. It's like the dirty little secret TV show everybody has. Fan fiction is great! It gives writers who may be new to writing the world to build within without having to invent it from scratch. It provides the scaffolding for someone who may not know exactly how to character build but does know how to write dialogue. Alternatively, it can also give someone a sandbox to play in while they practice a few different concepts without being overloaded. ​

Imagine Harry Potter; everybody knows Harry Potter. You know it's about wizards, you identify with the Muggles, and you know it's about a dark wizard trying to take over the world. But do you know about Rose Bronson? Probably not. Rose is the third year, who excels at potions, sucks at flying, and has a green thumb for herbology. She's a Hufflepuff that the sorting hat almost placed in Slytherin. Both of her parents were wizards before her, though Rose does have a little brother who has not yet received his letter for Hogwarts. Rose has a best friend in the form of a cat, but what she doesn't know is that her cat is another wizard who has shifted and stayed a secret so he may help her achieve her destiny of becoming the next minister of magic.
 
OK, so that wasn't great, but it was off the top of my head, and to be fair I've never written fan fiction for Harry Potter. But, I had fun. I sat in my car and wrote a few sentences in somebody else's world, and it was satisfying and creative. My brain engaged, spinning tales, and looking for connections from J. K. Rowling's world to my character, Rose. There's not a lot required for fan fiction if you don't want there to be. Take a planet name, take a school, take the bare minimum necessary to get your juices flowing. Or you can borrow heavily from the world already created and set up your adventure. It's all up to the writer.
 
As a reader, I already know the basis for where my characters are and what they may or may not do. For example, I know that Rose cannot apparate. She's too young, and it's not allowed on Hogwarts grounds. I also know that her having a cat at school, is both allowed and encouraged. I know these things because I've read the original Harry Potter's. Without that knowledge, there may not have been enough world building already there for me to understand and know about implicitly. This frees both the writer and the reader to have to pay attention to less. They can focus on using words to express their story and less of the background. All of that hard work the author already did.

​What do you think? Do you like reading fan fiction? Do you like writing fan fiction? If you have a favorite, leave it in the comments below and share it with others. Junk food and candy are for sharing, think of it as a book reading sleep over.

It has finally begun. Querying. The one part about writing a book, but I was more afraid of than editing. For those that don't know, querying is akin to sending your job application in for review, or an artist's portfolio cover letter. Querying is when an author gives a small portion of their book and a cover letter with a synopsis to an agent or a publisher hoping for them to request the full book to read. The hard part about query letters is that you have one page and just a few paragraphs to pitch, in my case 106,000 words, of a novel to somebody who knows nothing about your project. Your query has to be good enough to catch them and entice them to want to read further.
 
The Keeper’s Reign is in this stage of production. I am currently querying both agents and publishers, and I have been never more excited, anxious, determined, and discouraged all at once.
 
With the modern job hunt as it is, you've probably turned in a resume online or even in person and then had to wait for some unspecified amount of time to hear back whether or not you're a good fit. Sometimes, you don't hear back at all. This is essentially what a query letter is. You send this email off into the ether, and you hope that one day somebody will respond. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't and sometimes their response time is six months. Six months of waiting, of twiddling your thumbs and of praying somebody will request your full manuscript. I'm currently at this stage I'm in now.

Recommendation: 
Alpha Landon will remain on my Did Not Finish (DNF) list. I tried, I really did, but the story was simple, poorly edited and written, and there was little to no plot. If you’re looking for a teen novel, reading shifters for the first time at a young age, or just want a mindless easy read that’s like candy, then go for it. If you’re looking for anything above that, give this one a pass I think.

Landon is to be the next Alpha of his pack, his shift coming to change everything about his life, except his love for his friend Althea (great name!). Althea and Landon have been friends for years, and after his change, Althea is worried her friend who she’s been madly in love with since she can remember, will change. Maybe he won’t have time for her, or maybe he’ll just find his mate and move on. 

Althea is a young shifter whose family has never approved of her relationship with Landon. Her father is set on finding her a mate, but none of them will ever be Landon, and Landon won’t have that. No one is good enough for his Althea. No one. Except him.

The story has great bones, but unfortunately, It feels like the author stopped writing at the outline phase and none of the settings of characters are fleshed out enough to sink your teeth into. If a draft two of the book were to be released, I would give it another shot, but as it stands, the plot was too weak to grab me and help me over the writing hurdles. 

Just a quick catch-up vlog here to tell you of some of the changes I've made to ImaginaryAdventures.me and some fun things coming up! 
Happy Reading!
​Eliza

​I never thought that my reading ability would change. Obviously, I don’t mean reading level or vocabulary, but with the depression, I have had to re-learn to read. I struggle with outwardly expressing emotions, that doesn't mean I don’t feel them, only that they stay locked inside my head, not my blood stream. The exception is through books. 

Whether my own that I am writing or another’s that I am reading, I am an incredibly empathetic reader. My body hurts, my heart hurts, my mind soars, and my emotions race, right alongside the characters. This empathy is both incredible and can cause problems. Here’s an example. Would you give an alcoholic a beer and tell them not to drink it? Don’t give a suicidal teen a bottle of pills. Don’t give a depressed person a tragedy. 

Now I need to qualify that. Reading doesn’t make me sad, and I only have my own experiences to go off. I read about characters who have heartbreak, and I can’t stop reading until their life turns around. Thankfully, I can read a book in a sitting; I tend just to get one hell of a book hangover. But if I am reading a book that is overly sad or even one that just has the characters going through a rough patch (read all novels), then I get down. My heart plummets, I get cuddly with my husband in that, hold me, I’m trying not to break, kind of way.

​Overall my empathetic reading is a blessing, but recently I have had to update the way I read so that I can function after I am finished, have another book to jump right into, or can crawl into bed and sleep off the hangover.