Update 10/9/23

Going through some significant life changes right now, so I haven’t had a ton of time to write, blog, and more. When the dust settles a little bit, I’ll know more where I am with the whole thing. I would say this is my most significant life change to date. I’ll share more details when I go through some motions.  I have a reading coming up for Halloween stories on October 25th at Alloy Brewing at…

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Book Review: The Greenland Diaries: Days 101 - 140 (The Greenland Diaries #2)

  Howdy Readers! How was your Christmas holiday? Good I hope! I spent some time with family and the boyfriend and couldn’t be happier. Work is going to be a bit more stressful given some recent turnover, so that and grad school starting in late January may mean less book reviews until things calm down. Speaking of which, it’s time for another book review! This time I read The Greenland Diaries:…

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August 2022

what do you think anne, marcy, sasha and sprig would be like on tumblr

great question adorable question

anne’s blog is basically just her bedroom but more of it. thai things, lesbian things, her favorite music/artists (a lot of kpop), her favorite shows (she reblogs gifsets of suspicion island with tags that are way too fucking long considering the writers themselves definitely did not put that much thought into the show), her favorite athletes (mostly just serena), her favorite movies (ranging from terrible cheesy romcoms to indie cult classics), cute cat pictures, calming aesthetics, fun fashion looks, and posts about how much you should love & cherish your friends. she doesn’t make that many original posts, but her tags are so sweet & funny that she gets a lot of asks anyway. once she disappears her mutuals just assume that she found a steady gf & stopped using tumblr, so they’re all like “aw i miss her but good for her i guess :(“ if only they knew...

(she comes back with little fanfare, just reblogging her usual kinds of posts again, and when she gets asks inquiring about her whereabouts she's just like "oh i was in greenland for five months. there was no wifi lol." she posts a lot more animals (besides cats), especially frogs and bugs this time around, but nobody questions it because. it's tumblr. everybody loves frogs now.)

marcy’s blog is actually rly popular because she is constantly making lengthy original posts about such a wide variety of topics that there’s something there for everyone. there’s a lot of rpg & fantasy & video game stuff, but also a lot of engagement with non-fiction, whether it be history, science, math, or music, and since she’s clearly so knowledgeable about so many things, no one would guess that she’s actually only 13 and not like, a grad student. she has one of those usernames that is long & kinda cheesy but she can’t change it now bc it’s, like, her brand, and people are constantly referring to her by the first word of her url as if that is her name. sometimes she shares her art or music she's working on too, and even though it’s not super polished or anything, it always gets a lot of notes just bc she has so many followers. when she suddenly drops off the face of the earth, her followers won’t stop sending her asks to check if she’s okay, and then a bunch of her other followers get super defensive and are like “she’s probably just focusing on writing her dissertation right now and doesn’t have time for hobbies. leave her alone!!!”

(she's still on tumblr as an adult, but mostly uses it to answer asks every once in a while and promote the new chapters of her webcomic, which has a huge following both from longtime followers of her blog and from new fans who just recognize the inherent awesomeness of it. she now posts her other art, bonus panels from her comic and also some miscellaneous stuff, on her patreon though, so her tumblr is mostly an archive of her teenage self. she doesn't have it in her to be embarrassed though. after all, she was a really smart kid.)

sasha’s blog is so confusing bc half of it is like tender lesbian pics and half of it is like blood & gore & weapons. she also just makes a bunch of personal vent posts that make no sense, and she loves those posts where the op is basically larping as like, an evil mad scientist. her blog is a fucking mess and she has basically no followers because she just uses tumblr as like an anonymous diary and for once doesn’t actually care about how she’s perceived. sasha has seen anne & marcy’s blogs before, but she pretends that she doesn’t really know what tumblr is around them simply because she refuses to let anyone know, even (especially) her closest friends, about this secret abomination.

(the few followers that she does have can steadily track her mental health improving over the years, and they're quietly rooting for her as she posts less and less, even if they do miss her funny textposts about swords and girlbossing. by the time she's 18 the only social media she uses is bandcamp. good for her.)

sprig is 10 and also new to how the internet works in general so when he makes a tumblr after seeing anne scrolling thru it on her phone he has absolutely no idea how to use it and mostly just posts original drawings he does of his friends back in wartwood. everyone thinks these frogs are ocs of his, and don’t really understand why he keeps referring to the little yellow frog character named ivy as his “girlfriend.” he thinks he is just sharing his culture with the good people of the internet. everyone assumes that he’s nonbinary because of his name, but he’s like “no im just a little frog boy!!” which of course only reaffirms to these people that he is like, a white transmasc in his 20s. anne gets worried that he’s gonna expose himself, but then she sees that he only has like 50 followers and she’s like actually ykw i think we’re fine

6 months is a long time! Where did you study? Japan is a popular trip from here. I’m thinking I should go sometime this year, too. I have a some vacation I can use, but we have to use them during term test weeks. Funny enough one of the times is in April! So I might go in April or July. Are your kids excited about going to Japan? I imagine it’s not easy traveling with kids haha but I’m noticing that sometimes kids are easier to rally if they’re happy and curious.

I think my favorite thing about Seoul is that it feels less like one city and more like a dozen cities laying right next to each other. There are endless things to explore bc each neighborhood is its own place. They’re similar ofc but they are unique in their own way. My least favorite thing tho is how far my neighborhood is from the really interesting parts of the city. It’s super easy to get everywhere but it’s gonna take me an hour. So I can only go places on the weekends. I have to be careful not to overdo it tho! These past two weekends I chilled bc my birthday, some social events, and Seollal are coming up back to back. I really have never been so social in my life! Did I tell you about the queer book club I’m in?

Oh and before I forget, I need to tell you how much I’m looking forward to To Kill a King. It’s such a fascinating story. Meadow is a favorite of mine so I always like your more complicated worlds. I’m working on a novel atm with a complex world, so I’d love any advice! —🐮 anon

I was living in the Netherlands although I traveled around Europe a lot. It was AMAZING, definitely one of the best periods of my life.

My kids are soooo excited about Japan, they've been asking to go for years. I'm hoping what you say is true, that they'll be troopers about the travel. It won't be from lack of excitement though, I just know 24 hours of travel and sitting on a plane is rough, especially for a 5 year old 😵‍💫 Hopefully it won't be unbearable though and this will free us up for more trips. They want to go to the Bahamas next (for sharks, they're both super into sharks) and Greenland... I'm thinking yes to Bahamas and no to Greenland haha.

You didn't tell me about the queer book club!! That sounds like so much funnnn. All of your descriptions of Seoul sound great. I wish I could remember more detail about the time I spent there and where I was but I was in a tour of Asia for work and it was all such a whirlwind so I've had to mostly just live vicariously through my research and now you 😊 So many exciting things coming up!! Feel free to drop aaaaany mundane experiences here, I volunteer to be the diary! haha

And thank you for your excitement about TKAK haha. I'm inching along on the next chapter. It has a lot of scenes that need careful choreography... but I did some cheating writing ahead this last week too and I'm so excited for future scenes so that'll help me push through the harder chapters!

Karmok - Marianna Mørkøre. The Weather Diaries. The Biennale introduces young generation fashion makers and established designers from Greenland, Iceland and the Faroe Islands.

COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — A territorial dispute between Denmark and Canada over a barren and uninhabited rock in the Arctic that has led to decades of friendly friction has come to an end, with the two countries agreeing to divide the tiny island between them.

Under the agreement, to be signed later Tuesday, a border will be drawn across the 1.3-square-kilometer (half-square-mile) Hans Island, in the waterway between the northwestern coast of the semi-autonomous Danish territory of Greenland and Canada's Ellesmere Island. The rock has no mineral reserves.

“It sends a clear signal that it is possible to resolve border disputes ... in a pragmatic and peaceful way, where the all parties become winners,” said Danish Foreign Minister Jeppe Kofod. He said it was “an important signal now that there is much war and unrest in the world.”

Canada and Denmark agreed in 1973 to create a border through Nares Strait, halfway between Greenland and Canada. But they were unable to agree which country would have sovereignty over Hans Island, which lies about 1,100 kilometers (684 miles) south of the North Pole. In the end, they decided to work out the question of ownership later.

In the following years, the territorial dispute — nicknamed the “whisky war” by media — raised its head multiple times.

In 1984, Denmark’s minister of Greenland affairs raised a Danish flag on the island, buried a bottle of Danish schnapps at the base of the flagpole and left a note saying, “Welcome to the Danish island.” Canadians then planted their own flag and left a bottle of Canadian brandy. Since then, the countries have in turns hoisted their flags and left bottles of various spirits in tit-for-tat moves.

In 2002, Nana Flensburg was part of a Danish military crew that stood on the cliff to perform a flag-raising ceremony. The Politiken newspaper on Tuesday quote her as saying in her diary that "among the stones in the cairns were lots of bottles, glasses, etc. with documents that informed about previous visits to the island.”

The agreement enters into force after the two countries’ internal procedures have been completed. In Denmark, the Parliament must first give its consent to the agreement. ____________________

BOOOOOOOOOOOO, the whole situation was hilarious and now they're ruining it.

September 2022 Wrap-Up

4.5 stars

The Underground Girls of Kabul: The Secret Lives of Afghanistan Girls Disguised as Boys/Jenny Nordberg (documentary non-fiction)-Follows the lives of girls and woman in Afghanistan who live as boys and men, used to live as boys or have their daughters live as boys.

4 stars

Wintergirls/Laurie Halse Anderson (ya realistic fiction)-Lia is sick. She doesn’t eat. Her ex-best friend who hasn’t spoken to her in month dies in a hotel room all alone. Before she died she called Lia. Lia didn’t pick up the phone.

3.5 stars

Carola Storms the Chalet School/Elinor M. Brent-Dyer (Chalet School #23) (middle grade school story)-Carola is thoroughly tired of traipsing around the world with an aunt who doesn’t really like kids. She decides to run away-to the Chalet School.

3 stars

Frightful’s Mountain/Jean Craighead George (Mountain #3) (middle grade nature realistic fiction)-Frightful flies and mates and nests, discovering how to be a free falcon.

Watch Over Me/Nina LaCour (ya magical realism)-Mila is aging out of foster care. She’s going to work on a remote farm as a schoolteacher for a family which takes in tens of foster kids. What they didn’t tell her before she took the job is that there are ghosts on the farm.

2.5 stars

The Luckiest Girl/Beverly Cleary (ya romance)-Shelley is leaving rainy Oregon to go live in California for a year. On the first day of school she already knows who she wants to go out with. She just needs to let him know she exists.

‘Twas the Nightshift Before Christmas/Adam Kay (Adam Kay hospital diaries #2) (epistolary memoir)-In the seven years he worked in hospital Adam Kay was in Christmas for six of them. These are the diaries from that time.

2 stars

Narwhal on a Sunny Night/Mary Pope Osborne and A.G. Ford (Magic Tree House #33) (children’s fantasy time travel)-Jack and Annie travel to Greenland and find a narwhal. But there’s a boy with a spear who wants to kill it. Will they be able to stop him and make friends between everybody?

1.5 stars

Light from Uncommon Stars/Ryka Aoki (adult fantasy sci fi)-Shizuka Satomi made a deal with the devil to give him seven souls. There’s just on left she has to find. Katrina is a trans musician who has just run away. And Lan Tran is a spaceship captain and refugee with a doughnut shop.

Update 5/15/23

Weekly update. Release date for new book, MinnesotaCon is coming, FREE kindle book for the week, and Tears of the Kingdom taking over my life. Enjoy! #writing #amwriting #fiction #horror #books #freekindlebook #kindle #free #tearsofthekingdom #zelda

Well, I was very lucky to participate in one of the biggest and greatest gaming events in all of gaming lore and land. The release of the beyond anticipated Breath of the Wild 2 or the Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. I went out at midnight. Waited in line with tons of other Zelda fans. It was long enough to wrap around the building to where Chipotle had their dumpsters and people were…

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Book Review: The Greenland Diaries (The Greenland Diaries #1)

  Seasons greetings bookworms! How are you doing? Did you get all your Christmas shopping done? I have one more gift to buy on Friday, but other than that I’m solid. Other than that, things have been a bit chaotic. I’m writing as much as I can, but there have been a number of developments with work that have me very disappointed, enough to where I don’t want to engage for a while. Focusing on…

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Just because #pridemonth is over, doesn't mean there aren't more #pridereads from Black and POC authors you need to discover. Listed: Don't Cry For Me by Daniel Black Ballad The Ballad of Perilous Graves by Alex Jennings Wash Day Diaries by Jamila Rowser and Robyn Smith D'Vaughn and Kris Plan a Wedding by Chencia C. Higgins My Government Means to Kill Me by Rasheed Newson Boys Come First by Aaron Foley Greenland by David Santos Donaldson The Memory Librarian: And Other Stories of Dirty Computer by Janelle Monáe Her Heart's Desire by Anne Shade You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty by Akwaeke Emezi Vagabonds! By Eloghosa Osunde This Wicked Fate by Kalynn Bayron #pride #pride2022 #pridebooks #blackandqueer #lgbtqbooks #goodblackreads #blackbooks #readblackauthors #blacklgbtq #booksbooksbooks #bookstagram #booklist #bookrecommendations #blackspeculativefiction #blackfiction #afrofuturism #blackromance #bookflatlay #wellreadblackgirls #readblackbooks https://www.instagram.com/p/CfsTAswteej/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

Dear Diary,   I walked 23 miles today [50,000 steps on fitbit].  My feet are so fucking sore.  

Also, I saw a duck (3 of them) that shouldn’t be here.  It is a circumpolar duck that should be in the salty Arctic Ocean right now.  It should be in Siberia, Alaska, the Northwest Territories, Nunavut, Greenland...not some little freshwater lake in Tennessee.  Another Long-Tailed Duck was seen in Nashville a decade ago, so there is random precedent for this spot...but why?  They are thousands of miles off-course.  Birds are fucking stupid sometimes.  Get a GPS.  

(Download Book) Against the Ice: The Classic Arctic Survival Story - Ejnar Mikkelsen

Download Or Read PDF Against the Ice: The Classic Arctic Survival Story - Ejnar Mikkelsen Free Full Pages Online With Audiobook.

  [*] Download PDF Here => Against the Ice: The Classic Arctic Survival Story

[*] Read PDF Here => Against the Ice: The Classic Arctic Survival Story

 * Duration: 7 hours and 17 minutes *The harrowing, amazing, and often amusing personal account of two mismatched Arctic explorers who banned together to keep themselves sane on an historic expedition gone horribly wrong.Ejnar Mikkelsen was a man devoted to Arctic exploration. In 1910 he decided to search for the diaries of the ill-fated Mylius-Erichsen expedition, which had set out to prove that Robert Peary?s outline of the East Greenland coast was a myth, erroneous and presumably self-serving. Iver Iversen was a mechanic who joined Mikkelsen in Iceland when the expedition?s boat needed repair. Several months later, Mikkelsen and Iversen embarked on a journey during which they would suffer virtually every travail in the Arctic repertoire: implacable cold, scurvy, starvation, frostbite, snow blindness, plunges into icy seawater, Sisyphean sledging conditions, Vitamin A poisoning, debilitated dogs, apocalyptic storms, gaping crevasses, and assorted mortifications of the flesh.

Icelandic artists and designers speak of weather influencing their designs. The exhibition “Weather Diaries” is created by artist duo Sarah Cooper and Nina Gorfer. It features both poetic photographs and installations, created in close cooperation with twelve artists and designers from Iceland, Greenland and the Faroe Islands.