The Worlds of Ashley Stangl

"Finding Nemo" is possibly my favorite Pixar movie, so I was skeptical when "Finding Dory" was announced. "Finding Nemo" needed nothing more. A sequel would only dilute its power. But the more I heard about the film, the more I believed that this wasn't just a cash grab, that Pixar might just have a good story to tell.  I wasn't disappointed. Though "Finding Nemo" remains a perfect film in and of itself, "Finding Dory" adds a new angle that enriches the story in ways I'd never considered. The plot is simple: A year after the first movie, Dory is living happily with Marlin and Nemo, when her faulty memory suddenly allows her to remember the parents she lost years ago. The three fish cross the ocean and search for her parents in the Marine Life Institute, a fish hospital in California. They meet new characters and run into several mishaps along the way, all of which are very amusing, leading to a glorious, over-the-top cli...

Rachel, one of my fellow Five Magic Spindles authors, is conducting a series of interviews with all of us authors on her blog, Hamlette's Soliloquy.  My interview was posted today. Check it out here if you want to see me fangirl about G.K. Chesterton and Agent Carter and other book and entertainment-related topics. You can check out last week's interview with Michelle Pennington, the author of "Spindle Cursed" here , and interviews with the other authors in upcoming weeks.

A couple weeks ago, Hamlette at Hamlette's Soliloquy nominated me for a Liebster Award, with the following rules. 1. Answer the 11 questions given by the person who nominated you. 2. Nominate other bloggers (up to 11) and give them 11 questions to answer.  The questions look fun, and after a busy couple of weeks, I finally have the time to answer them, so here goes! 1.  Are there any movies you like better than the books they were based on? I first watched the 1995 Sense and Sensibility not long after I'd read the novel, and I was obnoxious in hating on all the ways it differed from the book, but a couple of years ago, I watched the movie again and adored it. Sense and Sensibility is my least favorite Jane Austen novel, and the movie improves upon the book in so many ways. The romance between Elinor and Edward feels real, important and emotional.  Colonel Brandon gets to perform a big romantic gesture for Marianne that outdoes Willoughby's, and their ma...