Hyba Is Writing

S02E04: Sorranids - An Unexpected Savior - TRANSCRIPT   Hello, and welcome back to another episode! I'm on a roll these days, working on episode after episode. I'm especially excited for the next couple of episodes because they're going to be all about two very interesting creatures that live in the Black Desert: the sorranids and the kahlaqrabs. Today, I've decided to get us started with a little background on sorranids. Sorranids are really cool little creatures. As I mentioned in the last episode, they're these slug-like animals with tough, leathery skin. They are quite small, with the male sorranids growing to the size of maybe an adult's thumb, and female sorranids growing to almost twice the size. There are millions of sorranids living in the Black Desert, and their population has really thrived in this environment, possibly because of the lack of natural predators to keep the population controlled. I said that they were slug-like creatures, but hey differ...

 S02E03: The Black Desert - Could You Survive? - TRANSCRIPT Welcome back to another episode! I hope you've been doing well since the last time you were here. Today I want to delve into one of the main settings in The Pirates of Sissa, which is the Black Desert. The book begins in the Black Desert, and it ends in the Black Desert - which, you might come to see, is quite poetic in its own way. I'm going to talk today a bit about the setting itself, what the climate is like, its importance as a region, and mention a few creatures that live there. I won't go into everything there is to know - because I want to keep some of that to myself until you can learn about it in the books and short stories I write - but I think this episode will cover a large chunk of the general info that there is to know about the Black Desert. So, let's get started!   As the name suggests, the Black Desert is a vast desert of… black sand. Temperatures can rise quite high during the day, and for mo...

2021 Book Review: Bloodless Assassin by Celine Jeanjean Today, I want to share my review of Bloodless Assassin by Celine Jeanjean. Of all the books I've read so far this year, this book is definitely one of the front-runners, so I'm excited to gush about it a bit.   I'm not a big steampunk fan, so the fact that I've read no less than four steampunk fantasy novels in the past couple of months is a pretty big deal for me. So maybe I'm a fan now. We'll see. Bloodless Assassin follows the story of Rory, a girl who lives on the streets of Damsport and whose friend and survival buddy betrays her on her most important day: the day when she can finally have her shot at becoming a sword preceptor's apprentice. Her friend's betrayal ruins her chances at getting a better life for herself, but not all is lost, because Rory finds out about the famous Viper's weak spot... his phobia of blood! She blackmails him into training her, but soon finds herself embroiled...

Q&A: Why Am I Rewriting The Pirates of Sissa ? A while back, I found that as soon as I opened my manuscript in order to work on it, it wouldn't even be a few minutes before I'd give up and call it a day. I felt overwhelmed and intimidated and simply didn't know where to continue working on the novel. Now, I love working on The Pirates of Sissa , so this was something that definitely concerned me. I knew that it wasn't about how motivated or inspired I was - I'd done a lot of work up until that point and I honestly felt that I was on a roll with the story. I even passed the 100,000 word mark, which was a big deal for me! And yet, there I was, staring at my open manuscript, not writing, and putting it away again.  I thought about what the issue was. What was keeping me from writing? I finally settled on a few reasons. The first was complexity. The book had gotten so complex, with so many characters and subplots and so much happening in parallel that it was a bit o...

 Book Review: Evil Under the Sun by Agatha Christie   A while back, I shared on social media that I was reading Evil Under the Sun , but didn't have time to share my review ! Today, I'm finally getting around to posting that review here on my blog.   Where to begin? There's a lot that I really enjoyed about this book, and of course, Agatha Christie is well-known for her ability to craft a complex mystery. She was so prolific, too, which means there are still a lot of her books for me to get through! Very exciting! The blurb of this book, taken from the back of my copy, reads: "It was August and the holiday mood ran high at the Jolly Rancher Hotel. The rich and the famous were gathered together on the picturesque Smuggler's Island. The sun shone from a blue sky... sunbathers sprawled on golden beaches... floats bobbed on the bay... and beautiful Arlena Stuart Marshall was strangled to death. Her holiday was over, but then so too was Hercule Poirot's..." Co...

  This summer, grab yourself a free copy of my eerie suspense novella, Apartment , on ebook! I am undertaking a survey on enhanced ebooks, and I'd love for readers of fiction to help me out by responding to the questionnaire here .  As a thank-you gift, you can opt in at the end of the survey for a FREE copy of my ebook Apartment ! Take the survey! More information about the survey is available in the information sheet in the first section. If you have questions, please contact the email provided on the survey. This offer will only be available until July 15, 2021.

StoryADay Post-Challenge Debrief 2021 - Part 2 Last time I answered questions 1 and 4 of Julie Duffy's StoryADay post-challenge debrief. You can find that here. This time, I'm going to answer questions 2 and 3. As this is coming over two weeks after the first part, there are going to be some writing developments that I'll include in this part of the debrief that weren't included in the first part. 2. What types of short stories came most easily to you? While I haven't been writing short stories as much as I have been writing for a few of my novels-in-progress - most notably Marie/Elise , my murder mystery, and The Pirates of Sissa , my high fantasy novel. I think, of those two, it was easiest to write my murder mystery, in large part because I was very inspired and motivated to do so, and in part also because it just didn't require as much brain power as my fantasy novels do.  When I'm writing my fantasy novels, I have to consider worldbuilding, how I'l...

Season 2, Episode 2: Rewrites and Flashcarding - TRANSCRIPT Hello again, and welcome back to Hyba is Writing! It has been a very long while. Since April, I believe. And here we are in June. Sorry to have kept you waiting so long! I may or may not have mentioned this on my blog, but I've been working hard on a couple of very big and important projects, one of which is academic in nature and so it definitely takes priority these days. The good news is that that one should be finished within a couple of months at the most, so we'll be getting back to some form of schedule soon. Until then, though, I hope you bear with me and my irregular uploading schedule, both here on this podcast and over on my blog. Today, I wanted to talk to you a little bit about a couple of things that have happened since I last recorded an episode. First and foremost, I've made a very important decision concerning The Pirates of Sissa that is going to most definitely result in a complete overhaul. You...

 StoryADay Post-Writing Debrief Exercise 2021 On the latest episode of the StoryADay podcas t, Julie Duffy shares the Post-Challenge Debrief exercise, which is an exercise that helps writers reflect back on the month of May, which, for quite a few writers, was StoryADay May - a month of writing one short story every day.      I haven't really been able to commit to it this year because I've had several other responsibilities, but I've enjoyed reading the prompts and listening to the StoryADay podcast in the meantime, and I have written a respectable 11,000 words in May, despite how busy and stressful the month has been, so I wanted to give the Post-Challenge Debrief a go. I've also been actively reflecting on my writing process in the past month or two, so any exercise that gets me thinking about my writing process is a welcome activity.   #1: What did I learn about my writing practice? Ideas 💭 Some of my best ideas this past month came to me while I wasn't wor...