Aurora Dimitre's Books and Rambling

 So, upon going through my archive it turns out that the only real goal I made for 2020 was my Goodreads reading challenge, which I kinda knew from the beginning that I wasn't going to hit, and I, uh, didn't--I hit 129/340, not even half , though I guess it's possible I'll hit 130 before the day turns, so there's that. But! I've got some creative/professional goals for this year! Let's see! Goodreads reading challenge 2021.... let's put the book wall into a random number generator... I'm at 1047... random.org gives me... oh for fuck's sake Yeah, this isn't happening. Let's... maybe... no, this is just what's happening now. Fuck me.  I'd like to get my actual certification to teach! I'm running on an alternate access license now, but my program is just one year, unlike the two years that technically the state gives you to get your license, so I've gotta finish that. Then next year I can keep teaching.  I would like to keep

 

 Ah, 2020. Actually not a terrible year for me? I tend to do most of my things alone at home anyway, and despite missing a Guns'n'Roses concert that I hadn't even bought tickets for yet, I don't think I missed much. But let's see what the hell I did this year.  First up, I did get a job teaching English at my old high school? I don't have a degree in education and I don't know who let me do this, but I guess that's what's happening now, so let's hope that I get that certification! Woo hop.  Steven moved in around March 13th, when the dorms closed down on campus, and so we've been living together for almost a year now. It's going well. We're doing well. As of December 29th, I read 129 books. It is possible that I'll finish one or two more before the year ends, but we're just saying I read ~130 books this year. Not anywhere near my Goodreads challenge (the dumb idiot I am put that somewhere over 300) but not bad.  I completed Na

 

So, I still count the Gone series by Michael Grant as like, my favorite series as all time, because that bitch has got everything. Cannibalism. Murder. Attempted lynchings. Worms eat a boy. It's a great time. Seriously, though, that series was dark, and it still amazes me that it was a cover buy for me.  And I'm not talking the newer, nicer covers. Oh, no, I'm talking these fuckers: But something just. Lit in the center of my soul again, and all I want to do is re-read this goddam series. Keep in mind, I still have 1050 unread physical books. That is an exact count. Except, no, it's not, because it doesn't count my Kindle or my books I have yet to haul. The actual count is something more like 1050+ books.  So yesterday I decided that what if I take some books out of the book wall? What if I just... go... and... yeah, I had another copy of Gone in the book wall. I think the fact that I can very rarely justify re-reading books really adds to me buying books I already

 

 

 Thinking about what's coming up next, publishing-wise, and honestly it's anyone's game. Anyone except probably the third Aughts Boys book--probably? The thing is, with my rotating to-do list and rotating times whether I end up doing shit or not, it's entirely possible that one month I could write fifty pages of, say, the third Aughts Boys book, but jack shit on the second Vendettic book, and then suddenly this Aughts Boys book is closest to publication.  But this is what I'm rewriting currently: Like Hell . Standalone--unsure whether it'll be a novella or a novel as of yet. Not technically a true crime-based one, but it has a lot of true crime-y elements. Currently at 1550 words. First paragraph: Drew is trouble.  Sacrifice. Vendettic #2. Currently at 22128 words. First paragraph: Danny doesn’t even give Niko time to put his shit away before he says, “It’s a good thing that you’re back, because we start our tour with XXXmass next weekend.” Morph Suit Murderer.

 

 

  I'm a Therapist, and My Patient is Going to be the Next School Shooter by Dr. Harper Yeah, these originated on r/nosleep, but I happen to like r/nosleep, and my 2020 reading challenge on Goodreads is in some desperate need of some help (yeah, don't set your GR reading challenge at 340, for all of those who were wondering).  For Darkness Shows the Stars by Diana Peterfreund This is some Jane Austen book or whatever set in space as a young adult novel. I don't like Jane Austen or sci-fi, so this should be a fantastically inappropriate read for me.  No Exit by Taylor Adams I read the first few pages of this and it was just, an extremely realistic portrayal of losing control of a car in a snowstorm, which is pretty scary to someone in North Dakota in December, so it's gonna be good. One More Sad Song by Aurora Dimitre One boy, one girl, two hearts, their world, time goes by, secrets rise The secret is that I wrote this book and it's not a secret, it's on the spine

 

 I know, I know, we're all sick of this. Actually, that's a lie. I'm not sick of this. I love this so much every year. I wish they would give me a spreadsheet, that's how not sick of this I am. Let's go through my Spotify Wrapped, teeth-grinding detail by teeth-grinding detail.  First, we've got, somehow, discovered 344 new artists? Probably mostly from those couple of times I decided that I had to what they recommend to me? I don't think I ever listened straight through one of those. Also, top genres are... pretty much as they always are.  Then the first real weird thing happened. "The Bitter Pill" by Warrant is my top song of the year? Not even... Warrant's best song? Like, I love Warrant, don't get me wrong, all of Poison' s success definitely should have been theirs, but like... "The Bitter Pill?" But it's whatever, you know. "Bitter Pill." It's chill. Let's see what else we've got.  Two Guns'

 

 So, I finished NaNoWriMo a couple days ago. I actually finished in the wee hours of the 29th; I think it was about 12:30 AM--it was one of those situations where I told myself that I wasn't going to go to bed until I was done. And I finished! I just haven't written a blog post since then. So, this NaNoWriMo. Well, I did stretch the book to go the whole 50k, unlike last year, where I had to add a second shorter project because it was just ~done~ and there was ~nothing I could do about it~, so that's a good thing. I had several days where I wrote jack shit, though. Shit's weird. It is still so amazing to me, looking back at some of my high school-era NaNoes.... like, shit, past Aurora, what the fuck was up with you ? I did vlog the entire month. Okay, not the entire month--but, you know, the twenty-nine days that I wrote. None of these have been edited yet but they'll be coming out over the next few months. Feat. '46 Updates', which is where I talk about how

 

 

 If you're new here: hi, I started teaching English this fall, despite not having a teaching degree, kinda making it up as I go along, but I have enough base knowledge to really fudge some things and now I'm here.  So, pandemic.  Let's get this one thing out of the way: I'm in North Dakota, which is like, one of the bad ones. One quick bing tells me we're number 2 in Worst States to Be In For COVID Right Now , second only to our neighbor to the south, so that's real fun. This is probably because good ole Doug didn't issue a mask mandate until like, last week, so all we could do to make the kids put on their masks was uh.  Tell them. Which didn't always work, because we didn't have any real support. School board says we can't make them. School board says we can only request. Now we've got a mask mandate. Gotta wear it.  So about half of the high school has moved to distance learning. This doesn't sound like it would be super bad, and in fa

 

    One of my greatest attributes is my time management ability. I've always thought that I was good at just getting stuff done, because, historically, I have been. When I was still in school, I never really had to worry about getting shit done. Now, as a teacher, I'm caught up on grading and I'm still writing and doing creative things on the side. Now I'm getting a little behind on some creative things, but that's because of one thing. One thing that is both my greatest achievement in avoiding burnout and my greatest detriment in timely working.      That thing is the procrastination line.      To explain: I've been doing this since high school. When school started up until this week, pretty much, I only had it running on the weekends, because it takes a long-ass time to get through the procrastination line. What the procrastination line is, essentially, a line of tabs that I check briefly/watch a video/enter GR giveaways/read a chapter of a book/during NaNo, w

 

 

  NGL, this one scares me a little Flygirl by Sherri L Smith This is one that I actually read as a kid! I went to this library book club in the summer when I was in middle school and this was one of the books we read. I remember it being pretty good? We'll see! Yours for Eternity by Damien Echols & Lorri Davis Okay, so I said I'd read Damien Echols's grocery lists, I might as well suck it up and read his love letters to his wife when he was on death row, even though the front of this book is like, a little creepily stained. I got it secondhand. Not a fan. The Prince and the Pauper by Mark Twain because why the fuck not 172 Hours on the Moon by Johann Harstad This is one that I've had for a while, been interested in for longer? IDK, it's always looked pretty vaguely interesting. Supposed to be scary. The Chestnut Man by Scandinavian Author Man I've heard this is supposed to be gory. I'm down for that. Serial killer shit? Hell yeah.  Our Revolution by Bern

 

 This lull is different--this has nothing to do with sales, though I bet it will translate to that eventually. This lull is more about, 'Aurora ran out of pre-written books to publish, and now she actually has to finish writing them before anything else gets published.' Apart from books two, three, and four of the Pentalogy of Hell , I'm going to be on a much more rational publishing schedule from now on. It's going to be a longer wait between books. The whole reason my first... eight...? Books? How many books did I put out this year? It was like eight, wasn't it? Jesus. Either way, the whole reason my first eight or whatever books came out so fast was that I already had them written. They just needed to be formatted for publication. Now I need to finish rewriting. I have a ton of first drafts, we all know this--both because I've had years like last year, in which I wrote about a million first drafts, but because I've been stockpiling them for nine years. Bu

 

 

 Let's just say that there's a lot going on right now. Let's start with the obvious. US Election. We're kinda sitting here, staring at Georgia, willing Nevada to just finish it , maybe giving PA a couple of weird side-glances every so often, too, everyone with baited breath. Major news sources cut off Trump's press conference. Anderson Cooper called him an obese turtle? Vivid imagery, man.   In other news, uh, NaNoWriMo. I'm ahead because of who I am as a person, yesterday I wrote shit and today I... might write more? We'll see. Weekend's coming up so I should be able to jump forward there, and-- We're going distance again, for my school... our distance learning plan had, "if it turns orange, go distance" in it, and the county went orange, so we're distance. I don't know how for long--whether they'll change the stipulations of the learning plan, if we'll just do this for the rest of the year... worse for kids' learning;

 

 So, my horror movie this past Halloween was The Hills Have Eyes. The remake version--I don't have the original, you know, with the guy who was in that Motley Crue music video in it. I do intend to get my hands on the OG version at some point, but, as of right now--2006 is the only version I've seen. And it was all right! I feel like I should have liked it more. Cannibals are my favorite. Watching it, I knew, logically, that I should have loved it. And I did enjoy. It just wasn't... god damn it, it just wasn't a Texas Chainsaw .  One thing this movie did do for me, though, was reintroduce the song "California Dreamin'" into my life. You know, that one from the sixties by The Mamas & The Papas. The minute that song started playing over them driving through the desert, I was hit with something. It was the feeling I get when I hear something like "Love Shack" by The B-52s, or "Immigrant Song" by Led Zeppelin--this was a childhood song.

 

 

 I know I talked about this about a month ago or something, but now, it's like--holy hell, NaNo's like, this weekend. I'm so glad that it starts on a Sunday, so I don't have to decide my topic at school, but can instead do so in the comfort of my own home and, maybe, get a nice chunk of it written that first day.  I think what's going to suffer this time around is my reading. It's been picking up again lately--mostly this is me giving myself permission to read literally when ever I have time, and making myself stay away from my phone unless I've finished a book that day. So that's been going good, but when NaNo's on, I've gotta be doing that, obviously. One thing that is absolutely crazy to me is that this is going to be the first year in like, a while that this is my first and only first draft of the year. I've been doing like, at least four or five a year for the past few years, and this year I've been staying away... I almost started o

 

  All the Ugly and Wonderful Things by Bryn Greenwood You guys, I cannot express how excited I am for this book. This is one of the most controversial books published in the last few years (it's the pedophilia book!), it's been compred to Lolita, , bro, I am fuckin pumped. So  pumped!  Fat Chance by Leslea Newman This is a book from the 90s that features a girl with an eating disorder, or something? I don't know, it looked like a fun time.  Your Favorite Band Cannot Save You by Scotto Moore Not gonna lie, I threw this on the stack to keep out of the book wall because it is so damn short. But , I bought it because it sounded interesting--in the book, there's this new band on the scene that like... hypnotizes people? I am not sure what this book is about, to be completely honest, but if a book involves music I am probably going to be there. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess This is a re-read, but this is also one of my favorite books of all time, so I am so very excit

 

 So, I'm gearing up to publish three more books soon, probably in the next few months, and then the question comes of the covers. I'm self-publishing, so, for covers, the choice is really between making some shitty cover on the Amazon Cover Creator, or paying someone else to do it. Between the five that I've published so far, three have been Amazon cover creator, and two made by other people.  The difference is as follows: AMAZON-- To be honest, I don't hate the Columbiner cover. I think it actually turned out decent, considering. It's a little mysterious and a little dark and, considering it's about a school shooting, not bad. OUTSIDE CREATION: Also, I didn't actually pay for the SKWC cover, the creator was just wanting to expand their portfolio and was looking for people who needed book covers. When I publish subsequent books in the series, though, you best believe I'll be going back to that cover artist. Cover artists for the ones above, by the way: Z

 

 As I'm typing this, I'm looking forward to a five-day weekend. Technically, it's a four-day weekend, but I have to get my new car fixed because the g'd security system decided that I'm stealing it and will not start  (props to the junior that correctly guessed that it was an early-2000s Ford when I mentioned this in class), so I'm taking tomorrow off. Today we had snow. Friday, AKA, my last day with the Grand Marquis god damn it (props to the dude who bought the Grand Marquis today, now I am 800$ richer with that car completely gone from my life), we had snow. Thursday--oh man, are we supposed to get snow .  Here's my thing--I figure that this will not last long. After next week, man, we're going up to record highs until November, at least if we want to listen to our extended forecast. And I like to be optimistic (currently, while my Expedition is not wanting to start, I am driving an early-2000s Prius, so, not the optimal winter car), so I'm going

 

 

 So, I decided to use DIYMFA's writing tracker for ten days... and this is how it turned out. This is what my writing looks like in a ten day spread.  Date Environment Words Time How It Felt October 3, 2020 Home Office ~3000 7:09-9:01 Working on revising AB #2—it amazes me how gory I got for a class project. Still, this is a fun project and I do enjoy seeing Matt in a situation where he is not the villain. October 3, 2020 Home Office 122 9:20-9:26 Journaling—something I do every night and very rarely think about as writing, but I guess it is, huh. October 4, 2020 Home Office n/a 11:17-11:24 Outlining SKWC #2—this is going to be an interesting one to rewrite. I’m not sure how… actually good this is? I really enjoy how the series turns out as a whole but MORPH SUIT MURDERER is by far