College Blog

Hello everyone! I know it's been a long time and I haven't updated my story. I am here to tell you...I still haven't updated my story. I am in between computers at the moment and haven't uploaded my document to this one from my drive yet.

However, I have started a blog that discusses my college life, American Sign Language, and other things related to that. If you're at all interested in ASL or what an Interpreting program looks like, I'd recommend you check out my new blog. The blog post linked is a sexual harassment discussion in relation to my experience with it. My first blog post is about shy people in an ASLIE program.

Please read and share my new blog, I'd love to see more experience related information on the internet about ASL programs. 

Update

Lately, my life has been unusually busy, which has caused book writing to stall. I picked up a second job to add to my first job. In addition to those two "official" jobs, I am also helping at my dad's bookstore and creating the church bulletin. The last two are volunteer and unpaid.

Because of this, I haven't been able to keep up with sign language (I watch videos to keep my receptive up). I also have not been able to write my book.

For about a week I was in Texas with my dad and a few church members for a conference. The conference was about Abortion. I am an abolitionist, so that is why I was there. It was a good conference and very uplifting for my spirit.

I am actually going to overhaul my book when I get the chance. I think there are a few chapters that could be done differently. They have an...unsettling undertone that I did not intend. I didn't see it until I read it again, so I am going to change those chapters. Also, there are some grammatical errors that need to be fixed.

Sam

Merry Christmas!

Hello readers!

I wanted to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and give an update on my writing.

My writing is currently on hold due to some research I am doing for my father. They are working on an Anti-Abortion documentary called Babies Are Still Murdered Here which is a sequel to Babies Are Murdered Here. 

This research does stunt my writing only a little because, in the end, it also helps my writing. Following a slippery slope approach is what makes Dystopian books possible. I am a Pro-Life Christian writer and I hope that is reflected in how I write.

I have not had a lot of time to edit my book, but the moment I am able I will start editing it again. I am currently reading other stories on Inkitt and writing reviews. I hope to get my own readership back up after my story is successfully edited for a second/third time.

The chapters are likely to be shortened again, I am going to change from 20 pages per chapter to between 10-15, which is more manageable for online consumption.

Thanks for your patience.
Sam

Authors Note addition

Hello! I recently added an Authors Note to my book that explains why I formatted languages the way I did. It also gives shout-outs to a few people who have helped me this far into the process. In addition, it gives a little more detail about what I am doing with the printing presses in the story.

I am editing my book now, after adding the 6th chapter. Due to new information about presses, entire chapters are going to be overhauled. Mainly chapters 4-6. I am reading my entire story first, again, then I am going to edit as I go. When I'm done I'm printing my book again and having my mother edit it.

I don't anticipate this book being complete for a while. But please continue to support by reviewing, sending e-mails, and leaving comments. Also, share with your friends! I want feedback and opinions. I may not use all of them, but I want to be able to try and adjust the book as needed.

I am also planning on making a new group on Facebook to discuss the book. It would be privet. I also have a Tumblr dedicated to my book called WhenTheSkyCaughtFire. Please go follow that.

--
Sam

Writing Update

Hello,

I now have a facebook group that is dedicated to editing my book. It has around 6 or 7 readers in the group, so hopefully, I can start working out some issues.

On the same line of thinking, if any of y'all are interested in a Facebook Page for my story, if there is enough interest, I'd be happy to consider coming up with one. I would want to wait until I had the 6th chapter up. Historically, I have only ever been able to write 5 chapters before my brain runs out of ideas. I am on five chapters now, I have been attempting to write a paragraph a day.

During the school year, I get so busy that I am unable to write. This summer I plan to focus most of my time on Blogs, When the Sky Caught Fire, Knitting, and other work I have lined up. (Mostly odd jobs) And of course, I am doing my normal photography.

How did my school year go? I know most of y'all probably don't care, but here it is anyway. I got two As, one B, and a C. In my health course I got an S, so I passed all my courses. Next semester I am going to work hard to get either As or Bs and no Cs. I would like my GPA to go up a little, if at all possible. I have a 3.1 which is too close to a 2.9 for me. Can you tell I'm a perfectionist?

Sometimes because of my perfectionism, I have difficulty when writing. I want it to be perfect the first time. So, I'm forcing myself to write and upload chapters first before editing. The raw/rough draft is on purpose so I can get reader feedback on dialogue, character representation, and grammar.

Thanks for reading!
Sam

Charlottesville

When I heard about the protests and counterprotests in Charlottesville I was saddened. What type of world have we come to, exactly? White Supremacy groups are protesting the taking down of a statue. They care so much about this statue that they were willing to kill several counter protesters to make sure that it happened. Where is the justice in that?

At the same time, we need to remember that General Lee would not have stood for the KKK. In fact, he didn't even condone slavery. The fact of the matter is, General Lee did have some degrading thoughts towards black people. That wasn't uncommon for the time. While that doesn't make it right, maybe tearing down everything that has to do with the South isn't the best plan.

As someone who lived in the south and has Southern friends, they resent the fact that all their monuments are being taken down. Tearing down their history doesn't help your cause. Keep that in mind. The civil war is a huge part of the South's history and a huge part of ours. Both sides made mistakes.

At the same time, by fighting so hard for the statues they have raised them up to be idols. For that, they need to be taken down. We don't need the statues to be up anymore, they never needed to be up to begin with.

What I'm saddened by in Charlottesville is the fact that there is so much hate from the White Supremacy groups. The fact that there is a large majority that claims to be Christians? That causes me pain and sadness.

Jesus said, "If you hate your brother, you are a murderer." Make no mistake, White Supremacy people hate black people. They hated the counter protesters enough to send a car through the group, and some of those people were white.

In the book of Revelations and several other places, it talks about people from ALL nations being in heaven. Not just white nations. Also, they would have to hate Jesus. Jesus came from a Jewish family with Jewish roots. He was not the white skinned, blonde haired, blue eyed man that you see in pictures.

Racism is a poison to our society and will cause us to crumble.

Sam

Printing Presses and Dystopian Writing

As you know, there are different sized printing presses. Modern day ones are large and used for newspapers/books. A printer could be considered a printing press. However, I have noticed a flaw with writing a dystopian story with old printing presses.

I have to become a designer.

This wouldn't be considered a problem for most people, but I like to have all the facts before I design. I want to design a more portable printing press for the Rebels in my book. I have run into a problem. What is that, you ask? I'll tell you.

I am stuck between having them use Titanium and plastic. If they use Titanium then it could be only slightly less heavy. Where would they get the Titanium? If they use plastic, can they find a heavy enough plastic so that way the machine can work? How long would the machine last? They could never buy spare parts.

This is where I need help. I need help researching how much a titanium machine would weigh as compared to a Cast Iron machine would weigh. Then I need to find out what the plastic would do when created in the likeness of one of these machines. And I mean both big and small machines.

This is my current dilemma. Ugh.

Desensitized

So, I was on facebook one day (shocker) and I saw a friend had posted something so I went to look. In the picture, there was an extremely underweight girl. She said if people weighed more than 115 pounds there was a problem. The picture disturbed me, the girl looked like bones. I saw Anorexia or another eating disorder. I almost cried.   My friend was mocking the picture along with some friends.

When did we get to be so desensitized? That girl could be dead now and people would be mocking her photo. Why didn't the man who took the screen shot call an emergency number? Her weight is unhealthy and she needs intervention. But instead, she is mocked? I'm sure that helped.

Then not long later I saw a facebook post about a woman who left a church because she couldn't nurse her baby without a covering. Even though she was given several other choices with what to do. Then she complained about it on facebook live. She chose to be offended and use the law to punish a church despite the fact they did not kick her out. She chose to leave.

America has a problem. We get offended by everything and then we mock girls who need to be in a hospital. It's time for us to grow up. Y'all aren't teenagers anymore. 

Politics and writing

When writing a dystopian novel you tend to look at the politics of the current nation. In most public speaking classes they will discourage you from going to the extreme. While I understand that, in my book, I go straight to the extreme. Whenever you look at history nobody expected the extreme when it happened (the holocaust, genocides, etc). If nobody ever talks about it then nobody will expect it.

The first thing that I want to discuss today is our president. I respect him because he is our president, he has made the economy better, and I do believe he has the best intentions for America as a nation. However, when people start bringing him to the level of God, that's where I have problems. I recently saw a meme that struck a nerve.

"He gave up his million dollar home (company) to be mocked, ridiculed, and dragged through the mud just to save the American nation that he loves."

Okay, back up. Last I checked he is still making money from his company? (maybe I'm wrong here) He's already taken expensive trips and his kid is still at his original school. Secret Service agents don't do their job for free.

The other thing is, the people I saw posting this were Christians. That bothers me a little. We don't worship President Trump. We worship Jesus, He died for sinners. He was mocked, ridiculed, and beaten on our behalf to save sinners. Trump isn't God and people should stop elevating him to that level. It is nothing short of blasphemy.

It also scares me a little. When people start admiring humans to that level crap starts to hit the fan. We can't allow ourselves to become so enamored with a man that we forget about the God who made us.

Culture and Writing

Hello, today I wanted to talk about two major things that I'm studying/doing right now. The first of the two is about Culture.

I've started taking cultural anthropology and studying Deafhood (which dives into the culture of the Deaf). I am not a cultural relativist, I am far from it. Despite my views on it, I am learning a lot of interesting things about language development and other things that develop differently depending on the culture.

With Deafhood I'm having some problems with culture shock. Deaf culture is very different from hearing culture and that's going to be hard for me to overcome. And then you hear them raging against hearing people because of what we've done to them. As a result, I would end up exhausted on my short day. What I'd like in the class is transparency, for example, where are the sources for this information? (Students are required to cite sources, teachers should be held to the same standard) Was there anything that hearing did that was good? (If you constantly push the negative then you have the potential for jaded students.) Why is it bad for hearing people to help? Nurses don't get ragged on for wanting to help, why should interpreters have to put up with it?

With writing, I am close to the end of editing my 3rd chapter in my book. I am hoping to get it up in a couple of months. I am also still working on my prequel (When the roads ran red) and I'm unsure of when the first chapter will be up.

Thanks for reading!
(Questions, comments, advice is encouraged)
Sam

Immigration, bans, writing

Hello!

Today I have decided to cover a couple issues. 1. Immigration/bans. 2. Writing. I hope I can cover both of these thoroughly.

1. Immigration. I saw the executive order that had to do with immigrants/refugees. This is a very evil order. How do you tell people who are being murdered, "I'm sorry, we don't want you here," or "Fend for yourselves?"   How can you do that?
And then everyone jumps up and says, "God Bless America."  How can God bless America when we are aborting our babies? And now we're turning people away when the Bible clearly states how we are supposed to treat the sojourners in our land.
Yeah, turning away the refugees will certainly help with the terrorism problem. *Sarcasm*

2. Writing. I have been editing my book over the past few days. I plan on working on it some more today after I've finished my homework. I will have enough for at least 3 chapters. I thought I had more than that but editing has taken out a lot of unneeded information while adding a little bit of needed information.

Thanks for reading,
Sam

Inauguration, writing, college

Hello!

For the past week I have been doing several things:
1. Editing and writing my book
2. Starting another book (A prequel)
3. Attending college
4. Doing homework
5. And watching the Inauguration.

Let's start with number 1. I almost have enough edited to put up chapter two of my book. I am on page 43 and I told myself that after I doubled the pages I did I would put it up. So, the next 22 pages are almost ready.

Number 2. I have started to write another book called "When the Roads Ran Red" and it is a prequel to When the Sky Caught Fire. It's basically about how it all began. The title is tentative but I'm fairly certain that will be the title.

Number 3. This year I have 7 classes that I'm taking at my college. The majority of them are my ASL classes and 3 of them are general courses. I am hoping to finish my homework tonight and tomorrow so I won't have to worry about it during the week.

Number 4. I have been doing homework for the past few days and expect to finish it tomorrow. Thankfully, since it was the first week, I don't have a lot of homework. If I can learn to keep on top of it now it won't be as hard later in the semester.

Number 5. Friday I watched part of the Inauguration. I must say, I did like Mrs. Obama as a first lady. She was very classy. I do want to see how the Trump presidency will go. I am not optimistic about it but I would like to see if he turns out to be good for the economy.

Thanks for reading!
Sam

Editing, reading, writing, and homeschooling

Hello again!

Today I am editing more of my story and have found some inconsistencies. One of the biggest ones is after Moisés is shot he doesn't have as much trouble as he should during the story. That is one of the biggest detail fillers I've had since I've started the story. I am currently on page 33/34 and hope to get up to page 40 done within the next few days. I would like to post a couple of my chapters back up on Inkitt before I start school again which is next week. 

I have also been reading a book called The Perfect Horse by Elizabeth Letts (I believe that's her name) it is an excellent book about the Lipizzaner horses in Nazi Germany. It made me hate the Nazi's even more, not because of how badly they treated the horses but because of how well they treated the horses in comparison to people. I'm about a quarter of the way through but I hope to be done with that book in a couple days. 

Recently I saw an article about how home-schoolers shouldn't go to college. While I agreed with them in one sense I also did not agree with them. Part of the reason is because I am in college, I have been in college for two years. The career I'm going for cannot be attained without a B.A. degree so it is a direct insult to home-schoolers who want to be doctors, nurses, midwives, interpreters, teachers, and so on. 

In the area I agreed with them on was the fact that not every job needs a degree. For instance: To start your own business or become an salesman you don't really need a degree, you can learn that from other people. Or even a writer, you don't need a degree. Some of the best writers did not have a degree in writing/creative writing. It isn't a necessity to write. 

Anyways, those are my thoughts. Thanks for reading!
Samantha

College, writing, postcrossing

Hello!

Today I've started to get ready to go back to college. I've been gathering info about SAT tests (transferring), checking to make sure that my application for graduation went through, getting my transcripts sent to my colleges of choice, and next week I'm getting my books for the college I'm attending now.

For writing I plan on editing my book at some point. I am on page 27 and still editing. Changing back to third person is very difficult, it causes the story to morph once again. I hope that it turns out in a way that I can like. (Either that or I end up scrapping complete paragraphs).

And finally, postcrossing. I love postcrossing because you get mail from all over the world. Just yesterday I got two postcards from France and one from PA (USA). I currently have 6 postcards travelling and hope to get a few more out before I'm too busy with college.

Have a great weekend!
Sam

Happy New Year!

Hello and happy new year!

I hope 2017 will be a better year than this year. I hope to be finished editing my story by March but maybe those are high hopes. (=  I'm doing well though! I am on page 25 of my editing and my page count keeps going down. My margins were too big in my story so editing that as well has been cutting down on the size of the book.

Maybe I can get my story done by 2018? *Laughs hysterically* Lets shoot for 2020 and if I get it done before then it'll be a pleasant surprise.

So, thanks for reading!
Sam

Writing Disabilities

Today I am talking about how to write disabilities. I am obviously no expert, but I think some of these things could help other authors with writing. (Published or unpublished)

I have two disabilities I have written before (unpublished/fanfiction) and I think there is always something to be learned about writing it.

1. Blindness.
You need to be very careful with how you depict any person with a disability. It can become very easy to offend people by acting like they are unable to do things. (Driving is a given but even some legally blind people can, technically, drive.)
The first thing you need to do is get educated on the subject. If you aren't informed you will come off the wrong way.
The second thing you should do is get to know the people. Go out of your way to meet blind people. Be transparent about what you're doing. Being honest is the best way to go.
The third thing you should do is read literature (fiction) that focuses on blindness. It will give you a general idea on how to write it.

2. Deafness
Again, you need to be extremely careful with how you depict any group of people. This applies for deafness as well.
The first thing you need to do with this is take some ASL courses and/or a Deaf culture class. This will help you become mildly educated on the subject. I would also suggest reading a variety of books on the subject.
One such book is called: Inside Deaf Culture. This particular book brings you back to the eighteen hundreds and earlier (if I remember right) and details Deaf culture from that point forward. I am currently a little more than halfway through it.
The second thing you should do is go meet some Deaf people. Take an Interpreter with you if you know you won't be able to understand. Be transparent about what you are doing, they will appreciate your honesty.
And the third thing is read literature that focuses on it. I haven't read much literature with Deaf people in it, unfortunately, but there is a Manga called A Silent Voice and is an excellent manga. I am very picky about what type of Manga I will read but that particular one is and always will be one of my favorites. I have read the first three and will soon have more on hold at my Library.

Thanks for reading. This just scratches the tip of the iceberg but I hope it can be of some help.

Sam

Editing

Greetings!

Today I am editing my story. I have started on it and have made it one page in, so that is good. So I'm now on page 19 instead of 18. I imagine if I stopped procrastinating I could go further. 

Anyways, lets move on. 

Today I got on Postcrossing and saw I could send more postcards! I swear, the post office is going to hate me for the mail but love me for the money. Today I used my last two overseas stamps so I'm going to have to purchase more. I think I should check my bank funds before I go making anymore purchases. 

Lately I've been thinking about photography. Why, you ask? Because I want to make a good cover for my own book. The only problem is then I'd need to edit it to fit the thing on Inkitt. Which is hard enough as it is. Especially since it seems nearly impossible to find a good editing tool that won't cost an arm and a leg. If you know of a good one (without a monthly subscription) please feel free to leave a comment. I'd love to hear it. (=

Thank you for reading!

Sam

Editing update

Hello!

I have been editing over the past few days but got distracted today because of some things I had to catch up on. I had to finish editing my essay for college today so I did that and added it to my application. I'm still trying to light a fire under my current college's butt so I can transfer with ease. Which isn't turning out well since I'm an introvert.

I was sad to find out that Carrie Fischer passed away this morning. My prayers go out to the family and friends of this wonderful actress. When my father told me we both broke down into tears. I didn't actually expect her to die. I was convinced that she would live.

I have been disturbed to see people saying that, as Christians, we should not say "Rest in Peace" because she was an agnostic. What am I supposed to say? I am expressing my sorrow and grief of a human life gone. As Christians we are supposed to weep with those who weep. Right now her family is weeping after losing a wife, mother, friend.
It is nothing short of cruel to deny people the right to extend condolences.

So, Rest in peace Carrie Fischer.

Sam

Unpublished story on Inkitt

Hello again!

I have decided to unpublished my story until future notice. I still have it up in my editing area but it currently cannot be read. I want it in top shape for people to read. You can read my fanfiction on there or my prequel to the story (or what I have of it).

The reason I made this decision was because I've been having trouble with editing it recently. Tonight I plan on editing it and tomorrow (hopefully).

I am sorry if this causes problems. I hope y'all have a blessed Christmas!  I will be getting the story up soon.

Sam

Updates

Greetings!

A few days ago I joined Goodreads so that way I could get personalized reading lists. I'm going away at the beginning of January so I wanted to be able to borrow books from the library that would entertain me.

I am hoping that after my book is published I can get it on that website. Then I can have an author profile. (=   Dreams, wishes. Possibly not a reality. But it would be fun, right?

Today I went through my entire backpack so I could figure out what I needed after the school year. I discovered most of the books I had were ASL (as a rule I like to keep those) and the other books are either lost in my house or for sale at my Dad's bookstore.

So, that's what's going on. Stay tuned for my book. (=