Histories and Mysteries

I hope that each of you had a great Thanksgiving, by the way. If you know me though, the Christmas season begins in October or August, depending on the year. But before a very long line of Christmas related articles, we have today’s article about my TBR list. TBR is the abbreviation for “To be read,” and my TBR list is extremely long and not even complete yet. I will probably go through major authors and series in my list that I would like to read. Christian Heroes Now and Then Heroes of History By Janet and Geoff Benge Both of these series are by the same authors, and these are biographies. The first series are the biographies of Christian missionaries who impacted the world through their evangelism. The second series are the biographies of American heroes. I find that interesting because the authors are originally from New Zealand. Anything Agatha Christie I love Agatha Christie’s books, and I hope to keep collecting them until I have read all of them. I am now collecting...

It is Thanksgiving weekend, and I am sure that all of you are looking forward to Thanksgiving itself. We have probably all heard the story of the Pilgrims: they left England to escape religious persecution, they immigrated to America on a rough voyage aboard the Mayflower, they survived a very difficult winter, they met some Indians who helped them adapt to the New England climate, and they celebrated the First Thanksgiving. But the Pilgrims did a lot more for America than just introducing the first Thanksgiving feast and create a national holiday. I had the privilege of doing a research paper over Thanksgiving in 7th grade. Unfortunately, I don’t have the paper with me anymore, but here are ten unknown things about Plymouth and the Pilgrims that I have come across in my studies. 1. The Mayflower was not the only ship that was supposed to take the voyage. The Speedwell was going to go on the voyage as well, but it needed to be repaired badly. Some of the Separatists had to stay ...

Today’s article is being written with a lot of huge news as well. I am not doing National Novel Writing Month, but I did say that I was going to finish writing my novel, and as of November 3rd, I completed it with 43,000 words and a bunch of plot holes. Anyways, I am still excited because it was my first novel, and I finished the first draft. Subscribe for another exclamation of more great news coming to the blogging/writing portion of my life. Today’s article is about the blogs I read and there are a lot. You may have already seen those on the sidebar of my blog, but here’s an official post about them. Any of the pictures I use are screenshots of those blogs, and will be self-explanatory about which blog each of those are from. Note: The blogs included are by people and not a company. For example, I could have included the blog at http://www.agathachristie.com/ , but it is owned by Agatha Christie Limited, a company. TAJ News Blog This blog is written by some friends of mine....

Welcome, back to the unconventional blogging months for Histories and Mysteries. November is NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month. In NaNoWriMo, writers everywhere attempt to write a novel of 50,000 words in the 30 days of November. In October and even September, the planning process begins. As any writer knows, planning is one of the most important writing steps. Trust me; don’t try writing a novel without planning. It takes a lot of dedication and time, but if the result is a finished novel then all one needs to do is edit in the follow-up month of January. This is so because most authors recommend taking a break from the first draft for at least a month to six weeks. Most writers began their novel and finish it throughout the next year which is okay too because NaNoWriMo is more about dedicated writing than writing speed. If you miss NaNo in November, Camp NaNoWriMo is also available in April and July. Check out the website for this challenge! Personally, during this month, ...

Hello! I should probably make “Hello!” my greeting from now on kind of like the greeting of Cooks vs. Cons on Food Network (which is “Hello, chefs!”) My friend, Anna, wrote this article this summer (so you may notice some things that are not up to date such as her grade). More details on when Anna will be posting will come later; hopefully, by the beginning of next year. By the way, tomorrow is the 500th anniversary of Reformation. At her blog, Anna has an article about this: http://annasfamilyblog.blogspot.com/2017/10/the-reformation-500.html . I am very sorry; I didn't plan for this huge day in history because my schedule is a little off with my posting a week in advance. I would have loved to cover this topic myself, but didn't find the time to so you will just have to read Anna's instead. And here's an article about the history of Halloween as well. Also, if you are interested, History Channel has a subscription feature where you can learn about what historical...

  Welcome back to my blog. Today's article is about my writing/school/regular vacation to Texas. My family took a trip to the Dallas-Fort Worth area in Texas to visit relatives in early fall. This was a school vacation because I still had to spend time on vacation to write my essay and read my homework for the U.S. History college class I was taking. The vacation put a lot less stress on my schedule because I had a good amount of time on my hands to write my first college essay. It was terrifying at first, but I did well on it so that was a relief. This trip was also a writing vacation because Texas is a crucial part of research for a novel I have been writing. I needed two different areas of the country to use as a setting for my novel, and I chose Los Angeles and Dallas. Before this trip, I had only been in Texas for the first year of my existence so I didn’t know what the area looked like at all. I also tend to assume that every large city equals LA, and I was obviously w...

This article includes groupings of some random unconnected books and two series that I have on my shelf. Actually, this month is probably the last regular month of posting in 2017. Subscribe if you want to see the schedules of November and December. I actually do not schedule what I will write about; I only plan each individual article two weeks in advance. Anyways, enough about blogging.  Books Read               The Summary  America's First Daughter by Stephanie Dray and Laura Kamoie THE NEW YORK TIMES & USA TODAY BESTSELLER In a compelling, richly researched novel that draws from thousands of letters and original sources, bestselling authors Stephanie Dray and Laura Kamoie tell the fascinating, untold story of Thomas Jefferson's eldest daughter, Martha "Patsy" Jefferson Randolph--a woman who kept the secrets of our most enigmatic founding father and shaped an American legacy. From her earliest days, Patsy Jeff...