Upon returning to homeschooling Nichole and Brooke in English and science, I've decided to broaden my scope for this series. Instead of simply sticking to grammatical rules, I will include simple primers on literary devices as well.

The elementary versions of these lessons will stick to explaining what the devices are and how to recognize and interpret them. The high school level classes published here on the blog will cover this as well while also speaking about utilizing them in your writing.

Today's story is another from the Myth and Science universe featuring Jenn and our resident adolescent refugee from space, Lily. It is set a few months after the events discussed in, "I have the Weirdest Friends," but you don't need to know anything aside from what has been mentioned in this paragraph to understand the story.

I might not have had a lot of time to really dig into any creative projects or make much progress on the ones I'd already started over the past couple of years. But this doesn't mean I forgot about them.

Sad as it sounds, I kind of coped with this desire to create and little to no time to do so via Pinterest. I might not have had time to make something, but I could usually scroll through Pinterest for about five to ten minutes each night and pin some things I thought I'd find useful once I had a bit of time again.

I have boards full to bursting with prompts and pretty stitches or psychology articles and infographics. I have pins of various mythological creatures and stories, all types of herbs, medical knowledge, funny geeky things, and all sorts of other things. Whole sheets of words pinned when I was just starting to have issues with aphasia after decades of not noticing the "spells" due to a lack of speaking in general.

It's an odd mix mash for those who find my public boards, but I have found them a source of useful information and an endless source of inspiration. I wasn't entirely sure what I wanted to talk about today, so I started looking through. And I found this image.

Today's story is set in the A.I. Universe, starting a few months after the events of "Opening Moves." However, there is absolutely no need to have read any other stories in the series to understand or enjoy this one.

I know today would normally have a Back to Basics grammar lesson; however, I promised to explain why so many seem to hate adverbs. The reasons aren't because of grammar really, and while it can be considered a relatively basic concept, this article just doesn't fit in the Back to Basics series. It's more of a technical aspect of writing, fiction in particular, so I am including it in that grouping.

​As such, there will be no elementary version of this lesson.

Story lines continue to intertwine within the Supers universe with today's story set the day after "Not in the Job Description." While you will see how our different stories are beginning to merge if you've read the other stories, you don't need to be familiar with the series to understand and enjoy the story.

However, if you'd prefer to see the entire series, you can find it all here.

A few weeks ago, I talked a little about how I came to realize the way I experience the world isn't how the majority of people experience it. As a result of that particular journey and the things I learned along the way, I came to realize I had written at least two of my characters as autistic without actually setting out to do so. Having come to this realization, I had a choice.

Rewrite them to be neurotypical, which is another way of saying "normal," which in and of itself is just a way of describing how the majority are, or I could keep them as they were.

The thing is, I cannot really imagine either Pyrrha or Asa being any other way than how I have been writing them. Plus, for me at least, nothing has really changed about how I view either character. Both are still strong, intelligent, kick butt women. They have places where they struggle and places where they shine like anyone else. There's just a concrete, neurological explanation behind some of theirs. 

Born of the Wall is set less than an hour after the events of "Conflict of Instinct" in the Myth & Science universe. You don't have to have read any of the other stories in the series for this one to make sense.

If you've ever hung around writing forums or even just google searched "adverbs," you may have the notion they are evil words that should be banned from the language. This is a notion rooted in writing conventions. It has it's place, but it is not the end all, be all for this group of words.

We will discuss adverbs today in a grammatical sense. I will touch on them in writing fiction in another article.

An adverb is exactly what it sounds like. It adds to a verb. Adverbs are words that describe or modify verbs.  

He runs fast.

She sings beautifully.

The dog quietly whimpered after being scolded for chewing the new shoe.

​In the examples above, the adverb is underlined, and the verb it modifies is in bold.