David Crowder* Band - o for joy Review

You may have heard that the David Crowder* Band is going to be breaking up soon. To me, that is a sad thing and means their last offerings are to be savored all the more. Oh for Joy is a beautiful collection of Christmas songs redone by DC*B
The CD starts with "Joy To The World," with DC*B giving it an exhilarating sound but keeping the classic melody and an originality that many new renditions of old songs do not achieve. Near the end of the song, at the "climax," Crowder sings "Oh for joy, lift up your voice! For Christ has come, for Christ has come!" The song calls you to praise God for his glorious Gift.  One thing that struck me as I listened to this first song was that DC*B stayed incredibly true to the original song while taking the feeling and message behind it and amplifying it.
"Angels We Have Heard On High" is done with a bluegrass flavor, the fiddle and banjo music giving a very appropriate joyful yet longing sound to the song. This song is a little more restructured than some of the others on this CD, but still retains the "feel" of the original song.  "O Come O Come Emmanuel" begins by softly entreating God to send The Messiah; towards the end, things get louder as Crowder sings "Rejoice, rejoice, Emmanuel has come," giving new energy to the old song.
"Silent Night" is mostly a recording of the audience singing as the band accompanies them. For a live recording, this has good sound quality and is almost exactly the same as the original song.  Finally, "Carol of the Bells," a cover of the Tran Siberian Orchestra's version of the song, ends the worshipful album with a rush.
I fully recommend this CD to anyone that likes Christmas music and wants another take on some of the best Christmas songs ever written. Try this CD with hot chocolate and cookies; and be ready to have the spirit of Christmas musically presented to you.

 See this article at: http://blogcritics.org/music/article/music-review-david-crowder-band-oh/#ixzz1erM3SeWI

NaNoWriMo Preparations

If you're going to participate in NaNoWriMo, you might be wondering if or how you should prepare to write 50,000 words in 30 days (which means trying for an average of around 1667 words per day). Well, if you're like me, that depends somewhat on whether or not you want your story to make sense, not that it's impossible to write a good story without planning by any means, but I seem to need to at least try to map things out a little before I start developing carpal-tunnel at the keyboard.

Fortunately for you, I'm not the one that's going to advise you, I just wanted to share this website: http://www.the-writers-craft.com/index.html and tell you what you can find on it.
One (extremely) helpful tool on this site, Character development sheets! Well, that's not exactly what their called, but you get the idea. You can download or print these sets of questions to ask yourself about your character in order to get to know him/her/it. There are also worksheets for setting up the plot of your story, describing the settings of the story and even organizing the different scenes in each chapter.
My only advice is to feel free to skip any of the questions/steps in the helps you'll find if you decide they are unnecessary, but don't be lazy and skip any that could potentially help you!
Good writing and God bless!

180 Movie

180 Movie is a new documentary by Ray Comfort that shows how he talked to several people who were pro-choice and in a matter of seconds helped them change their minds on the issue. You can view this 33 minute documentary for free at http://www.180movie.com/
I believe that if you are pro-choice you will be challenged by the questions that are asked in this documentary; I challenge you to watch it regardless of your beliefs on abortion!

Mapping: Vosmerre, I hope

I said in an earlier post that Vosmerre would be shaped like my iris (the colorful part of my eye). Well, it turns out that that island is actually called Vizin, at least for the moment.

I did finally start mapping Vosmerre, I think, but I'm not very far into it at all yet. However, here are some pictures of what I have done (if you have any suggestions or advice, please comment; I want to know what people think):

This is my continent, I haven't named it yet.

Watch out, these islands are home to a horde of especially vicious dragons called the Draken. Draken is a variation of an ancient variation of the word dragon, Draaka is the other variation of the same word, I think.

 

This is Vizin, it is roughly shaped like my iris!

Disclaimer: any and all features of this map are subject to change without notifying readers of this blog. Thank you, and have a good night.

Eye pictures!

I finally managed to take some accepable snapshots out of a macro video of my eye, one of which I will trace, making that shape into Vosmerre.
I will hopefully be starting my map on monday! Praise God!

Mapping: Vosmerre Is In my Eye and I Can't Get It Out!!!

As I said in an earlier post, I took up mapping in order to map my fantasy world centered around Vosmerre. But, unfortunately (this is when I explain the strange title) VOSMERRE IS IN MY EYE AND I CAN'T GET IT OUT!!!! [translation] The part of my eye called the iris is what I want to model Vosmerre after, it actually sort of looks like an island; the problem is I can't get a clear picture of it so that I can copy it on my map.
So this map is just for fun and practice. As you can see, it's not by any means finished-but I plan to update you on my blog as I progress on it.

Map-Building

Well, I said in my last post that I am going to build a fantasy world. It's named after the "main" nation in it: Vosmerre.
So I have been doing a lot of thinking and have been having a great time envisioning my world, but I realized I would need to make a map. I thought it would be neat to draw it by hand, but I was afraid it might take weeks to do and then I wouldn't even like the result; so I decided to buy a map making program called Campaign Cartographer. After I build the map in this program I might try to hand draw it too.

Here is a map of an island called Furim I made after watching a bunch of tutorials:

I really like this program and recommend it to anyone interested in that kind of thing.

If you have any ideas that you think might help with my map or world, please put them in the comments below. :-) Thanks!