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On October 8th, my family and I took a trip to The Living Desert, the local botanical garden and animal park. It was me, my parents, two brothers, and nephew. We were there for about three hours and it was three hours well spent. The three most interesting animals were the coyote, mountain lion, and bobcat.

We saw the coyote first and we must have shown up during meal time, since at least two of the coyotes were running around, excited. The third coyote just stared at the other two from where he lay, obviously wondering what all the racket was about. One coyote even stood on a rock and howled. I’ve never actually heard a coyote howl before, so that was exciting.

The mountain lion was active. A couple of people were there with a child. The lion kept running at the glass, trying to get to the little girl. It reminded me of when I was about three and looking at a leopard. The leopard paced on his side of the glass, licking his lips, thinking that I might make a good snack. I ran and hid behind my mom’s leg. The big cats’ natural instincts are to hunt small prey and this child looked like prey to her.

The cutest out of the three was definitely the bobcat. He was playing with a ball, batting it to and fro, acting like a housecat. As we watched, however, the ball came rolling toward us and got tangled in some wire. The bobcat pawed at the ball, until he got it free, at which point, he started playing again. He actually knocked the ball into the air, brushing the leaves of a low hanging tree.

All in all, it was a fun day. We saw so many cute and interesting animals, like a bighorn sheep standing on its own private rocky hill, a tortoise flipping another tortoise from its shell back onto his feet, and even a couple of wolves chasing each other. The animals were truly a joy to see.

On the Friday before Labor Day, I had to take a train. I was going to meet my parents, who were working to clean out our condo, so they can sell it. I stayed for five days, before heading home. My trip down, however, was more eventful than I expected.

When I got to the train station, I found out that Labor Day weekend is very popular for travel. It didn’t really mean much to me at the time, because my destination was only three stops away. The train arrived and I headed for one of the rear cars, thinking it would be more peaceful and quiet than if I was in the front. The trip went well. We got past the first two stops and I grabbed my bags in preparation to get off. Just before we stopped, I headed for the doors and they wouldn’t open. I could see that we were in the right station, but I couldn’t get off the train.

Panicking, I started looking for another door, even heading back through my car, desperately searching for a way out. I even asked some random passenger if he knew the way out. Finally, I found my way to a door with a guard… just as the train started to move. Panting, I hurried to the guard and tried to explain the situation. Luckily, it turned out that this was planned. The guard told me that they were just pulling up slightly and that they would let me off. I practically ran onto the platform, once the doors opened.

I found my parents quickly, so they were the only people still waiting on the platform. Once I calmed down enough, I learned that because Labor Day is a popular travel day, the train employees had added a couple of extra cars to the end of the train. They weren’t able to let me off originally, because my car wasn’t in front of the platform, but still in the middle of the track.

Well, I was able to help my parents clean up the condo, but I learned an important lesson that day: do not underestimate the popularity of trains on Labor Day.

I self-published Silver Rose back in October 2017. Since then, I’ve been working on the sequel, Silver Crescent. And working, and working, and working. I must have started and restarted that book at least two dozen times. I just couldn’t seem to get the beginning right. Then, a couple of months ago, I restarted again. This version is actually working.

In the last couple of months, but especially in August, my writing’s been going much better. I’m currently around page 64. I’ve added thirty pages in the last couple of weeks alone! Writing is so much more fun when it’s going well.

Silver Crescent Sample Paragraphs

I jerked awake to the sound of beating drums. The sound was loud, persistent, and unsettling, like somebody’s irregular heartbeat right in my ear. After a few moments, the sound faded away and I was left alone with the crickets and my two sleeping companions.

Just a dream, I thought, closing my eyes, but sleep eluded me as my mind raced.

Ba-bum! Ba-bum!

I sat bolt upright. There it was again. I glanced sideways. My friends, Mag and Artie, didn’t even stir.

Today is J.K. Rowling’s birthday. As such, I thought I would share my rankings for the Harry Potter books. Now, if you disagree with me, that’s fine. Everyone has their own opinion. This just so happens to be my order for the books.

Spoiler Alert.

7. Half-Blood Prince. The sixth book is boring, in my opinion. I know a lot of people like it, because Harry learns about the Horcruxes and how to defeat Voldemort, but it’s still presented in a pretty dull way. Most of the book is just Harry and Dumbledore going through Tom Riddle’s memories and that’s fine, the memories are my favorite part of the book, but where are the rest of the characters? We see Hermione and Ron arguing throughout the whole book, Draco trying to fix the Vanishing Cabinet and Snape attempting to help, and pointless romances between Harry and Ginny and Hermione and Ron.

Nobody gets much character development, except Harry, Dumbledore, and Voldemort. Everyone else just feels stiff and a parody of their usual selves. Why is Hermione snapping at Harry for using the Half-Blood Prince book? She’s never done that before. In fact, Hermione should be happy that Harry’s doing well in class. Sure, Harry should be asking Slughorn why the changes written in the book are better than the official instructions, but he is still learning. Hermione should be pleased.

There’s no much more to say about Half-Blood Prince. It’s boring, I find the romances tacked on, and the fact that Dumbledore uses students to deliver messages to Harry make them feel like owls.

6. Order of the Phoenix. Book five is where my love of Harry Potter started to wane. I was pretty young when all the books came out and I hated that the books became darker from this point on. Even now, I still don’t like how dark they’ve become. Now, I love conflict in books, how else would we have a plot, but there’s a difference between fun and gloomy. The first four books were fun. The last three are gloomy. My brother and I have a name for Order of the Phoenix Harry: “Caps Lock Rage Mode Harry.” Harry is just yelling all the time in caps lock, making him unpleasant to be around. He has good reason to be angsty, what with Voldemort coming back and Cedric’s death, but that’s not what I want to read. Everything is way too dark and gloomy and it took me forever to get through this book the first time, because it felt like a chore to read. Reading should be fun. You shouldn’t have to force yourself to do it. Plus, I hate Umbridge. Who doesn’t?

The only redeeming qualities in this book are Luna and the fireworks. Luna is a ray of sunshine. I love how she can cheer up both the reader and Harry while barely even trying. She’s my all time favorite character. Fred and George are their usual fun selves in this book. The fact that they were able to set off the fireworks and cause chaos for Umbridge was a brilliant move on their part. I love the mental image of Umbridge running from the fireworks.

5. Deathly Hallows. The seventh book beats out five and six for one simple reason: Voldemort is defeated. This is what the seven books have been building toward since Sorcerer’s Stone. (I’m American). The plot is boring, since a huge chunk of it is just Harry and Hermione going on a camping trip. Oh yeah, and Ron’s there sometimes. Moving on. It does pick up a bit when they go to Malfoy Manor, but I’m still disappointed in the plot. I wanted Harry and Hermione to be actively fighting against Voldemort and the Death Eaters, taking down their bases and forcing Voldemort to go on the defensive. Instead, they almost starve to death in the woods, while having no idea what they’re doing or where they should go. Woo.

Now, that being said, it does get a bit exciting at Malfoy Manor. I was devastated when Dobby died. Infiltrating Gringotts was interesting, even though I feel as if it would have been easier and the goblins might have helped if they explained about the Horcruxes. Regardless, it was cool to see them escape on a dragon.

The battle of Hogwarts was bittersweet. It was exciting and I love how Voldemort died like a regular mortal, not a supernatural creature, but there were too many deaths. Lupin, Tonks, Fred, and countless others. I’m really torn up about Fred. You can’t just separate Fred and George. I would’ve preferred Percy sacrificing himself to save both twins. Percy would have been redeemed and we could’ve kept both Fred and George. Done. Alas, it was not meant to be. Still, it was satisfying to see Voldemort defeated and good win the day. Just don’t talk to me about the epilogue. Ever.

4. Goblet of Fire. This book and my number three spot are actually interchangeable. I love them both equally, so it just depends on which one I like more on a given day. Goblet of Fire is a fun book, especially since we get to see more magical schools: Beauxbatons and Durmstrang. The extension of the magical world helps to put the books into perspective. If Harry fails to stop Voldemort, he could go after more people, not just the ones in the U.K. I’m not too bothered by Harry being in the Triwizard Tournament, since he’s the main character. The plot would be pretty boring if he wasn’t forced to compete.

That being said, Voldemort probably could have had Crouch Jr. turn Harry’s glasses in a Portkey and grabbed him on his next Hogsmede weekend, but nobody ever said Voldemort was smart. And again, there’s more of a plot if Harry competes.

This is the book where I started to dislike Ron. It annoys me to no end that he abandons Harry before the First Task, but since he is sorry, I can forgive Ron. It was just a momentary lack of judgement on his part. I do have an issue with Ron abandoning Harry again in Deathly Hallows, but that’s a problem for another day.

Beyond that, I am sad that Cedric dies at the end of the book. I wish he would have lived, but I understand that Harry had to be the sole survivor for the Order of the Phoenix plot to work. Fudge might have believed both Harry and Cedric together. Cedric’s death just turned Fudge against Harry for an entire book.

3. Sorcerer’s Stone. Like I said above, I love Sorcerer’s Stone and Goblet of Fire equally. Sorcerer’s Stone beats out Goblet of Fire simply because it’s the first book and our introduction to the series. I love entering the magical world for the first time and learning all it has to offer with Harry.

That’s not much else to say. My only complaint is that McGonagall throws four first years into the forest. Let me get this straight: Harry and Hermione get into trouble because they help Hagrid late at night, so their punishment is to help Hagrid late at night. What? I just wish McGonagall could have used a bit of logic. Why would Harry and Hermione feed Malfoy a lie about a dragon, tricking him into wandering the halls at night, and then do the same thing themselves? If it was just a lie, why would they risk leaving Gryffindor Tower? To watch Malfoy get in trouble? It would make more sense for them to go to bed and simply hear about it the next morning. Neville would have spotted them in the Common Room and they could have explained the situation. McGonagall makes no sense in this scene.

2. Chamber of Secrets. I love this book! Its so much fun! This book is lighthearted and whimsical, just like the first book, and I love the mystery. Yes, it’s obvious now that the memory of Tom Riddle was possessing Ginny, but when the book first came out, who would’ve guessed that? I also have a soft spot for this book, because I have fond memories of reading this book, absorbed in the story, while my brothers and nephew were noisily goofing off around me. Good times.

1. Prisoner of Azkaban. It should be no surprise that this is my favorite Harry Potter book. It seems to be universally loved by almost all the fans. My reason for loving it is simple: Sirius Black and Remus Lupin. I love both characters. I already mentioned that I love the mystery aspects of Chamber of Secrets. Well, Prisoner of Azkaban seems to ramp this concept up. We’re trying to understand why Sirius might have betrayed Lily and James, when plot twist, it turns out Sirius was innocent all along. I just love the reveal at the end of the book.

Well, there you have it. This is my ranking for all seven main Harry Potter books. If you would like to leave a comment, telling me your rankings for the books, I would love to hear it.

I mentioned back in May that I decided to volunteer with the local library to teach English as a second language. All the classes would be on Zoom. After going through several virtual training classes, I would either work one-on-one with a student or teach an entire class. I was assigned to co-teach an English Conversation Club. Essentially, the point of the club is just to get people to talk. Coming up with topics is another matter altogether.

I’ve taught three classes so far and the students are great. They’re all over eighteen and none of them were born in America, so they bring a rich variety of culture and life experience with them. My co-teacher and I have also learned from them. We did a lesson on the first day of Summer, where we mentioned the northern and southern hemispheres. One woman from Peru said that in her country, it’s cold during June and July and warm during November and December. I’d never realized the Peru was in the southern hemisphere.

All these people want to learn, grow, and thrive here in America and knowing English is a good first step. It’s hard to live anywhere, if you don’t know what people are saying. The English Conversation Club’s purpose is to give them practice, so they are comfortable conversing with others in this great melting pot we call America.

I love reading and writing (what author doesn’t?), but over the years, I’ve read certain tropes that, in my opinion, brings a book down. What do I mean by that? Well, have you ever read a book where you love everything about it and then suddenly, the author adds in a cliched story point that makes you roll your eyes? This has definitely happened to me.

Now, I’m not saying authors that do this write horrible books. Every book takes time and effort to write and I applaud every author who sticks through this major commitment. No, I still love books with or without cliches. It’s just that I have my own likes and dislikes when it comes to cliches.

This list is my own personal opinion when it comes to certain tropes. These are the ones that range from “rolling my eyes” annoying to “this author just wasted my time, I want to slam the book shut” irritating.

Spoiler Alert for certain books.

5. The Neglectful Parents

I can understand making your main character an orphan. This gives them no familial attachments, forcing them to go ahead with their hero journeys. My problem is when the parents are still alive, but ignore the protagonist so much, it’s like they’re an orphan anyway. These are the parents that are so wrapped up in their own lives, that they forget they even have a child in the first place. Why did you two have a baby, if you weren’t going to raise them? I don’t want the parents to be completely obsessed with their offspring and act like helicopter parents, where they’ll wipe their kid’s nose if they sneeze, but I would like the parents to at least acknowledge their child.

The opening chapters of The Secret Garden, by Frances Hodgson Burnett, represent this perfectly. Ten-year-old Mary Lennox lives in India with her English parents, but she’s actually raised by the Indian servants. Her father worked for the British government in India and was always too busy with his job. Her mother was beautiful, only wanted to go to parties, and didn’t even want Mary in the first place. Mary was spoiled rotten by the servants. They knew Mrs. Lennox might fire them if she even heard Mary.

I just can’t like parents like this. Yes, Mary becomes a better person after her parents die and she moves in with her uncle in England, but the neglectful parent trope is heartbreaking. I don’t like it when children think their parents don’t want them and that they’re a mistake. A child’s life is never a mistake.

4. Love Triangles

I’ve been watching a lot of Terrible Writing Advice on youtube lately. If you don’t know what that is, it’s a series of satirical videos where the creator, J.P. Beaubien, gives advice to writers. I just love his sarcastic tone when he’s giving his “terrible advice.” A running gag on the channel is Beaubien constantly telling his viewers to fix every writing problem with a love triangle.

Love triangles aren’t the worst trope ever, but it definitely isn’t my favorite. I actually tried to write one in Silver Rose, but gave it up quickly, because I found it too counterproductive to write. I already knew who I would pair Penelope off with, so why should I tease readers with the other option? The idea of a love triangle is to keep readers guessing. Oh, who will our female protagonist wind up with? Keep reading to find out.

The problem with a love triangle, however, is that either way, an author will anger readers. In the Hannah Swensen mystery series by Joanne Fluke, our main character Hannah finds herself dating two guys at once, who know about each other. Norman and Mike. Norman is the town dentist and at least a decade older than Hannah, but they have a lot in common, he’s funny, and Hannah describes him as safe and dependable, just like a favorite blanket. Mike is a detective and closer to Hannah’s age, but he can be a bit bossy when he’s telling Hannah to stay out of his investigations. Hannah describes Mike as a roller coaster. He’s dangerous and wild, but still a thrill.

My mom and I have both read some of the books in the series. We had a clear favorite between Norman or Mike. But, without giving anything away, Joanne Fluke eventually did marry Hannah off, and it wasn’t to the guy we wanted. We haven’t read any of the books since. This is the danger of love triangles. No matter what an author does, someone, somewhere, will be furious if you don’t “launch the right ship.” I’ve heard that shipping in books is a war. It certainly is.

3. The Misunderstanding

This is a favorite trope of all the Hallmark movies. In every single one of them, the main couple meets, falls in love, argue, and then fall in love again. And all in two hours. This isn’t just in Hallmark movies, though, the misunderstanding is littered throughout literature. The misunderstanding is usually something like this,

“I asked you to come to a party, but you said you were working. I saw you there with another girl.”

“I didn’t know you meant that party. No, I was there as part of my job. I was representing my department and you saw me talking to the mayor’s wife. We were discussing funding for my department.”

These are the conflicts in stories that can be solved with a simple conversation. This frustrates me to no end, because the misunderstanding is just padding for time, giving us an artificial problem that really doesn’t need to be there.

The day before I wrote this, my parents and I were watching “Fantastic Beasts 2: The Crimes of Grindelwald.” It’s only the second time we’ve ever watched it and I wanted to see just how bad it was two years later. Near the beginning of the movie, Queenie tells Newt that she read about his engagement to Leta Lestrange. Queenie’s sister Tina also read the article and immediately started dating someone else, who I doubt we’ll ever see on screen. Newt, appalled, quickly tells Queenie that he’s not marrying Leta. His brother Theseus is. Newt and Tina meet up in the middle of the movie, but Tina keeps cutting Newt off, not wanting to talk to him. Near the end, Newt finally gets a word in edgewise and tells Tina that Theseus and Leta are marrying. From the moment Newt and Tina appear on screen together to when the misunderstanding is resolved, I was internally yelling at them to just talk. That plot point added absolutely nothing to the story, except to waste my time.

2. Blaming the Hero for a Crime They Didn’t Commit

I know some people may not mind this one, especially since its in so many mysteries, but I hate it when a hero is accused of committing a crime. In mysteries, it’s usually the protagonist is a suspect in the murder and they solve the crime to prove their innocence. It’s a little different, though, when it happens in my favorite genre, fantasy.

Usually, in fantasy stories, this plot is saved for sequels. In the first book, we’ll meet the hero, they’ll save the day, and everyone will cheer. Nobody can deny that the protagonist is the goodest good guy who ever did good. In the sequel, however, all the characters turn on the hero, because there’s proof, flimsy unprovable proof, that shows they’ll doing bad. Whenever this happens, I classify the side characters as sheep, just going with the crowd.

In City of Bones, by Cassandra Clare, we meet our main characters, Clary and Jace. They save the day from a villain named Valentine and his evil organization named the Circle. Valentine and Jace are related, though, so that’s kind of a downer. Regardless, Jace still sides with good and helps Clary defeat him. All of the other characters are so grateful. “Thank you, Clary and Jace. We couldn’t have done it without you.”

In the sequel, City of Ashes, however, I think a couple of months have passed, and suddenly, nobody trusts Jace because of his connection with Valentine. They all seem to think that Jace, a proven hero, is about to turn to the dark side. Jace, a moody teenager, doesn’t do much to contradict this, except to pout. One character even treats Jace like a hardened criminal and throws him in a jail cell, just because Valentine got her son killed. Jace wasn’t even born when her son died, but clearly his being related to Valentine is enough proof that Jace was in on the plan. Jace’s own adoptive mom even turns on him and she’s known him for over ten years. All the teenagers treat Jace normally, but every single adult suddenly acts like Jace’s existence is a crime.

This trope just seems like another time waster, designed to make the reader question the hero, when we all know, they’ll be proven innocent by the end, anyway.

1. And Then The Hero Wakes Up and It was All a Dream

Everyone can agree that this is the worst crime a writer can commit. I don’t care if the rest of the story was fantastic, if the book ends with “it was all a dream,” I will be furious. This is the ultimate time waster. I want to be sucked into the story and feel like these characters are actually alive and I’m going through their problems with them, but if it ends in a dream, what was the point? The author just confirmed that absolutely nothing happened. My favorite characters were never real even within their own pages, so why should I care what happens to them? (The only exception to this rule is Alice in Wonderland, simply because the story is so strange that I have no idea if Alice was really in a fairyland or not.)

Luckily, I haven’t read many books that end as a dream, except for one. The Ugly Stepsister, by Aya Ling. The idea is an interesting one. A modern girl named Kat is asked to sort through a box of old children’s books in her attic. She finds an old, torn picture book of Cinderella. Kat’s mom calls her downstairs, Kat trips, and accidentally rips the book in two. A goblin spell on the book is activated and Kat is sucked into the story of Cinderella as one of the stepsisters, because she shares a slight physical resemblance to the character. A goblin tells Kat that they only way to leave the story and return to her mom and sister is to get the prince to “marry his true love.” Of course, Kat meets the prince and they fall in love, but Kat must try and force Cinderella and Prince Edward together, even though it pains her to see Edward marry anyone else but her. But, plot twist, since Kat and Edward are in love, Kat must marry Edward if she wants to leave.

Several problems here. Kat’s motivation for leaving Cinderella’s story is to return to the real world and to her mom and younger sister, Paige. Why should the reader care? Kat was only in the real world in Chapter 1 and was whisked away by Chapter 2. The only things we know about Paige are that she’s ten, made salsa, and likes Spongebob. As for Kat’s mom, um… she’s divorced? To be honest, we never saw Kat’s mom, we only heard her call to Kat while she was in the attic. Kat mentions during the course of the story that her father left them, so we don’t even learn this interacting with her family. Maybe if we had spent more time getting to know the mom and little sister, I would be rooting for Kat to go home, but it doesn’t seem worth it to me. The Cinderella characters are far more interesting and compelling people.

Another problem is the ending. Kat spends months in the story before she returns home and when she gets back, she has no memory of what happened. According to her family, she was knocked out for about a minute and Kat doesn’t question it. We know she was really in the book, because we see the goblins again, but why go to all this trouble to give Kat character development if she can’t remember it? She’s more confident, but doesn’t know why. What kind of ending is that?! So, yeah, Kat’s adventure really did happen, but since she can’t remember it, it counts as “she woke up and it was all a dream.” Aahh! So frustrating!

Tropes can be a wonderful thing. I love chosen ones, prophecies, and the hero’s journey, but you have to be careful with how you use them. All of my least favorite tropes could work, given the right author using them in just the right ways, but this can be tricky. Cassandra Clare may have blamed Jace for a crime he didn’t commit, but in a different book, Clockwork Angel, she wrote one of the most perfect love triangles I’ve ever seen, where I honestly didn’t know who Tessa would wind up with, Will or Jem. Aya Ling handled the misunderstanding far better than she ended the book. Kat was told never to discuss the book’s enchantment with the story’s characters. When she finally told Edward, he was surprised, but he did believe her.

My own advice on how to write tropes is to write whatever you want, what you think is right for the story. If you don’t like something, you can always edit it out later. And if you like a trope I mentioned here, don’t worry. Just because I dislike something, doesn’t mean that you have to think the same way. Write what you like and readers are sure to pick up on our passion. Books really are a beautiful way to bring people together.