Drops of Inspira

  Hello! After much consideration, I have decided to talk about just five audiobooks I listened to last year since June 2021 instead of listing every single one I have listened to since then. Life is busy, and I wanted to get this post out before summer faded to fall, so here we go. *Note: These aren't listed in any specific order. 1.  I've known about this book for some time. It's a favorite of several of my friends, but since I now read at a snail's pace because of life circumstances and the crazy job, I finally decided to listen to an audiobook version of this.  My word. Nothing my friends had said quite prepared me for the breathtaking scope and beauty of this. Cinderella in space with cybernetics? Not usually my cup of tea, but somehow this book managed to capture my attention. Fascinating to read or listen to: High. Possible questionable content: Yes. Story epicness: High Sensuality: Fair to middling. 2.  So, I don't think this was the actual version we listen...

  Hello! This is going to be my last Poetry 15th for a while. Except for a few scheduled posts, this blog is going to be silent for a while as I contemplate the direction I want it to take. One of the posts I plan to get out soon is last month's audiobook post that I never published. The reasons being is that the last few weeks were busy. I got sick for two weeks right during the time I needed to work on it, and there were family events. The yearly audiobook posts take quite some time to get out. There are a lot of graphics involved, and I have to hunt down pictures for the graphics and then I have to remember what I thought about the audiobooks. Luckily, Goodreads has been helpful with that as I review most everything I read. Here is this month's poetry prompt: Certain complications this month forced me to create these graphics on the Canva app. It was difficult to figure out where all my familiar tools went and took me far longer to create these graphics than I wanted.  Here...

  Hello! It's been awhile since this graphic has made an appearance, so I thought it was time. One of my favorite things about the Summer Reading Program at our library was seeing how many books I could cram into three months.       There was one time I checked out fifty books. It was so satisfying seeing my car trunk full of knowledge. I didn't read them all, but I did read a great deal of them. What were they about? Mainly pirates and underwater archaeology. Because...research. I'm a writer. I research weird and wonderful things. So, for this summer, I thought I'd post a little reading challenge. It's not fifty books. I wouldn't do that to you. If you are like me, reading is more of a challenge than it was as a kid, and if you read one or two books in a month, you are doing fantastic. This is just for fun. You can join or ignore. So, here's the graphic I made for the challenge: The idea is to read one of each kind of book by the end of the summer. I though...

           Hello!  As I was considering ideas for this month's prompt, the word "flourish" kept coming to mind. There are so many different ways that you can use this word so it should be interesting seeing what you come up with! Here is the prompt: Hope this prompt is able to generate some of your own creativity, whatever that may look like.  Here is my response: If you are viewing this on a mobile device, I apologize as the print may come out a little too small. You should be able to view it by clicking the graphic. I will be back this weekend to show you the Summer Reading graphic I made. I'm excited to get back into something resembling the challenges I used to partake in when I was a kid. Until next time... Julia Garcia / Arysta Henry

           Hello, friends! Just wanted to pop in and let you all know that I am alive. I had to disappear for family and health reasons, but I'm back. Currently, letting my ideas percolate as things come back to life.  Some things I have planned for this month are: Poetry 15th My annual Audiobook Appreciation Month post A summer reading challenge Writing has taken a dive lately, mostly due to mental health reasons, but I'm hoping to get back into it this month. Besides blogging, I'm hoping to tackle more drafting for my novel Sirens of Fate,  which is currently in its 5th draft. This 5th draft has been rough because after getting results back from Developmental Editing, I realized that I needed to strip many ideas of the story away and take it back down to almost the first draft. There are a ton of changes, but the skeleton of the draft and many of the character arcs will stay the same. I am excited to tackle it and make the story stronger. To sta...

  Hello there! This month has been a little different as I get ready to spend a few weeks with family and friends at the end of this month. It will be my first real vacation since 2019, and I am so ready for it. I've been feeling burnt out for a good month and a half. Creatively, it's been a struggle to do anything much but breathe, so I've scaled everything back a lot.  One topic I've been thinking about privately and talking a lot about with friends, is this idea of vulnerability. There is vulnerability and then there's vulnerability .  What do I mean by this? Well, for a long time I've thought that being vulnerable meant just sharing what is on your heart. And yes, that is definitely a form of vulnerability, but there is one that goes deeper. A vulnerability that lays the deepest, darkest parts of yourself bare and allows others to poke and prod, to examine your thoughts and hold them up to the light of truth. To examine the lies you may have believed since c...

  A long time ago, in an Instagram far, far away I decided to talk about some of my favorite underrated side characters. You know, the ones that don't get talked about enough, if any. There are side characters that get talked about to death (looking at you, Samwise Gamgee) because, you know, they deserve it, but that just makes the others get overlooked. So, I'm here to settle the score, to make sure my favorites get the spotlight for once in their lives.  The first side character comes from The Binding of the Blade  series by L.B. Graham, represented by this book here: I read this book when I was a very young teen. It made a decision that at first made me hate it. I literally threw it against the wall and told myself I'd never read it again, but once I simmered down, I came to respect the actions the author took and now it's one of my favorite series. My favorite underrated side character from these books is Aljeron Balinor. Besides having a tiger named Koshti as a bat...