July // Cake + Crime Scenes

~WELL. July was OVERFLOWING WITH JOY AND FUN.
SUCH a good month for me. I went beaching with friends, ate chocolate cake on my sister's birthday, and made things glow in organic chemistry lab. My sister made her own birthday cake and it was delicious and rich and chocolatey - and it didn't have any wheat or sugar in it! My sister is a magic paleo sorceress who makes good things out of ingredients that shouldn't make good things.

~ALSO this month I met up with Skylar from Life of a Random! I've never met up with a blogging friend in real life, so this was quite exciting. And it wasn't as awkward as we both expected it to be - three cheers for socially-adept introverts!

~As I mentioned above, I did make something glow in chemistry lab. It was a substance called luminol and is used in crime scenes to detect blood. It glows an eerie sort of blue. Here is an image I found on the internet  of a crime scene where someone was obviously murdered in the bathtub:

In our lab, it just looked more like this:

Weirdly enough, when I was in London, my sister and I went to an exhibit on forensics where they talked about luminol as a blood-detector, and I actually made a note about it in my phone. I didn't realize that we would be actually MAKING THE STUFF in organic chem lab until last week when I finally read the procedure. HA. Now I know all about it for future novels. (Obviously I took organic chemistry lab as research just so I can write about magic potions in my novels. And now crime scenes.*)

*It was actually a prerequisite for medical school. But that just sounds boring.

LOTS AND LOTS AND LOTS THIS MONTH

First off, I won the June NovlBox, and it arrived this month! Look at all the books I got from it:

The Prince of Venice Beach by Blake Nelson

Illusive by Emily Lloyd-Jones

Roomies by Sara Zarr and Tara Altebrando

Six Impossible Things by Fiona Wood (ARC!)

Those Girls by Lauren Saft

Rules of Summer by Johanna Philbin

Then, my uncle stopped by to drop off Island of the World by Michael D. O'Brien, which is huge and intimidating. My uncle said it's like Tolkien and Dostoevsky and Tolstoy and CS Lewis all wrapped into one, which kind of creates GIGANORMOUS expectations. Just a bit. 

I also went to the library to get Days of Blood and Starlight and Dreams of Gods and Monsters by Laini Taylor because I am an unapologetic binge reader. Yup. 

Click on the photos to go to their instagram versions.

 

 

Katie from Spiral-Bound introduced us to Riley, a character from her current WIP. Basically, because I'm lazy and never got around to writing a Beautiful People post in the last two months, I'm sending you to read hers, because it's awesome and Riley is badass.

Skylar from Life of a Random posted pictures from our meetup this month! Go check them out!

Cait from Paper Fury asked: why do we unfollow blogs? It's sad, but we do. It's a necessary evil.

Meeting Online Friends IN REAL LIFE! 

{Skylar from Life of a Random and I talk about what to expect when you meet up in person with someone you've only known online}

Rook by Sharon Cameron // Swashbuckling Dystopia wheeeeee!

{This review is basically lots of Scarlet Pimpernel gifs}

Top Ten Tuesday: Most Recently Acquired Tomes

{This is obviously not up-to-date anymore!}

How was your July? Did you learn any secret spy skills like I did? (If you ever find yourself in need of a blood-stain detector, hit me up.) And which of my new books should I read first?