They look like a sort of mealy bug to me. Spray isopropyl alcohol on them and if they turn red then definitely mealy bugs.
Get a cotton swab, spray it all down with alcohol and wipe them away and that should clear them up! Luckily they are pretty large and easy to see (at least more than other pests).
I have written the first draft of 2.5 books!
The first one was the 1/2 which just got a little messy and I didn’t enjoy it. It was my first major writing project and I just didn’t organize it well enough. I also grew out of the idea quickly and decided to stop and not waste more time.
My second book I managed to finish at 70k I believe (it’s been a while). Similarly I grew out of the idea by the end and it would have needed major revisions to push through editing.
My third and most recent one I really love, the first draft is complete and I am slowly editing it. Though editing seems to be my weakness it seems because it’s taking far longer than it should. This one I would love to actually clean up and eventually publish but yeah, going to take a while to get there!
I use Scrivener to write in and I highly recommend it! (you can usually find some discount codes for it as well). I like to use it to quickly draft the storyline and then expand each scene as I go. It also has some handy features for organizing research notes and pictures. It’s packed with so many features so it’s a pretty popular writing app among writers in general.
Fancy! This looks like it came from one of those collector edition sites for books! Definitely a pretty piece to put on the shelf.
Yeah, after finishing the Wheel of Time series it felt like I really lost something important and it was so hard to get into other fantasy worlds for a while due to how immersed I was in it for so long.
I read this book recently that fits into the mystery/crime/creepy category: What Lies in the Woods by Kate Alice Marshall
I remember once reading that someone did this for real. And another person would tear their paperback book in half if it was too thick to hold. I was very sad for a while after that.
I read an advanced copy of Horror Movie by Paul Tremblay and it was so good! Really recommend that one when it comes out.
Wow those are gorgeous. They look like they’re glazed ceramic!
100+ is very impressive! It sounds like you essentially finish a book every 3-4 days to get those numbers. How you keep that up consistently? I feel like I can do that for a month or two and then tend to need a break before picking up more.
I usually set a goal of 24 and generally surpass it every year (at 33 this year so far). I have months where I read a ton and then others where I just don’t even pick up a book due to getting busy. But it’s a solid goal just so I can see how I’m doing that year.
I do Halloween reads all year! I also just really like horror in general so I tend to pick them up a lot. There are a lot of different subgenres of horror as well so it’s hard to recommend stuff without knowing your specific preferences, but here are some that I’ve read recently and liked.
If you want creepy occult you can try:
If you want creepy atmospheric:
If you want messed up horror:
If you want classic horror:
You can go to second hand bookstores and grab lots of books for a much better price to stock the library with! Also worth keeping a bunch of extras to restock as needed. People are suppose to put stuff back into the libraries but not sure how the take vs. return ratios are.
Yeah I am not a fan either. I did find that if you filter out YA in general that gets rid of a huge portion of these romance masquerading as fantasy novels. It seems to be super prevalent there. But now YA is bleeding into adult fantasy as well and for that I end up having to read reviews to see if anyone specifically mentioned it.
This sounded great until the part where you can only read the ebooks using their app and you can’t transfer to kobo/kindle. That is a dealbreaker for me unfortunately.