May 2023 Doings!

Hello, everyone! This has been quite a month, to say the least. What I hoped would be a nice, relaxing month with plenty of writing and time with my sister (and the rest of my family) has ended up being anything but that. Well, the writing has been happening. But as for the rest . . . not so much. Also, on a quick housekeeping note: my blogging will be a bit intermittent in the next couple months (June and July). I have planned posts in both months due to time-sensitive things like book releases and mid-year book celebrations, so it won't be a full hiatus, but I don't know how much I'll post outside those pre-planned, time-based posts and my Doings posts. I don't love taking even a partial hiatus so soon after my last one, but between travel plans and writing deadlines, I think this is the best choice.

Writing!

• First off, don't forget that the Wags, Woofs, and Wonders anthology releases in just one month! Make sure you preorder the ebook or the paperback to get your copy of these eight enchanting tales of magical furry friends, including my own slightly spooky story, "Grim Guardian." (This actually has nothing to do with what writing I've done this month, but I haven't promoted the release as much as I usually would, so . . . bear with me, ok?)
• [Note: I originally said that the Wags, Woofs, and Wonders anthology releases in "one week." This was very incorrect and is the reason I should not write blog posts when I'm stressed and running low on sleep. The actual release date for the anthology is July 6. You should still preorder, though.]
• In other writing-related-but-not-actually-writing news (that you may have already heard), Through a Shattered Glass was selected as a finalist in the novella category of the Realm Awards! I am absolutely thrilled to have made it this far, so you'll forgive me mentioning it a second time on here. The winners won't be announced until the Realm Makers conference in July, so I have another reason to look forward to that weekend . . . you know, as if I wasn't already vibrating with excitement every time I thought about it.
• Happily, this has been a much better writing month than April was, with over 30K words and seven chapters added to my Selkie Story, plus a reworked outline for the rest of the book. My weeks have kind of alternated between not coming close to meeting my writing goals and blowing straight past said goals, so that's been interesting. I am, on the whole, happy with what I've written, and I'm looking forward to writing the rest. Hopefully I can get it done before my deadlines! I've also started working on the cover for the story, which will probably be in a different style than most of the covers I've made so far, and that's going to be an interesting challenge.
• I've also been somewhat productive on the D&D front, though less so. The campaign I run only met once all month, so motivation to finish writing the LOTR module has been low. On the other hand, I started writing the next adventure for the campaign, and I am so excited to get to actually run it. We'll be back in my original homebrew world, delving into some backstory for one of the PCs and tackling a problem that should be a little quicker to solve than most of the last few adventures, and it's going to be awesome. I'm nowhere near done writing, but I'm still exciting.

Reading!

• Yes, I've been stress-reading, why do you ask?
• Actually, that's a bit of an exaggeration — these mostly weren't stress-reads. Some of these are books I've been reading in email subscription form and just finished this month — those include The Wizard of Oz (always a pleasure), The Return of the King (wrapping up the last few chapters so it doesn't take another year or two to finish), and Frankenstein (Victor Frankenstein is a whiny little snot who doesn't deserve the title of mad scientist, and I'm not afraid to say it). Others — mainly Snow Quest Like Home and Thornrose Estate — were beta reads. Both were good, but Thornrose was definitely my favorite of the two (and one of my favorite reads of the month).
• That said, I had a lot of good reads this month. Behind Closed Doors is book 2 in the Worlds Behind series, and it was even better than Book 1 — I'm starting to develop a theory that the second book in almost any spinoff series will be better than the first one because the first one is laden with too many expectations.
• I also read and loved two books that people told me about ages ago, but I procrastinated on reading: Lord of Dreams and Echo North. Both were absolutely amazing, with magic and romance and mystery (and mysterious love interests). Lord of Dreams also had fae and portal fantasy, though my enjoyment was dimmed a little by my initial frustration with the heroine. And Echo North was a retelling of East of the Sun, West of the Moon, so you can probably imagine how much I loved it. I definitely wish I'd read both much sooner!
• The month also included two Beauty and the Beast retellings, The Scarred Mage of Roseward and A Thieving Curse, both of which I enjoyed more than I expected. (A Thieving Curse was better, though, and it stands alone despite being the first in a series.)
• That covers most of my reads this month. The rest is mostly rereads, with the exception of Martha Wells's Exit Strategy, which was cool in the same way the rest of the books in the series were cool. Wells is very good at writing nonhumans in a way that is both alien and recognizable, and the book on the whole was very exciting.

Watching!

• So, I have officially gotten my sister into Leverage, and I've continued getting her into Firefly! I am quite pleased to have someone to watch my shows with — it's more fun to watch things with people, but my tastes and schedule are different enough from those of my parents that it's sometimes to make anything happen. My sister, on the other hand, likes most of the same things I do, so that works out better. We've been enjoying Firefly, of course, and it's fun to see her reactions and predictions to the characters and situations that I'm already familiar with.
• With Leverage, since I didn't want to start over from the beginning, we temporarily jumped ahead to The Rashomon Job, the same episode my friend used to introduce me to the show. It's late enough in the show that you get an idea of the crew's dynamics, but the flashbacks also give you a very good idea about the individual crew members . . . and also, it's just a really fun episode. After that, we went back to where I had left off in Season 2.
• While I did watch a fair amount of other stuff this month (because we were at my grandpa's a lot, and he likes to watch TV shows, mostly older ones, in the evenings), the only other noteworthy thing is that, having watched one full episode and several partial episodes of Monk, I have come to the conclusion that I do not care for that show at all. Which is, you know, a bit sad because normally I can get behind a good mystery show even if I don't love the characters, but that one mostly just annoyed me.

Life!

• This month has been a rollercoaster, and I would like a break, please.
• Well, that's not actually accurate. The first week of the month was the rollercoaster. The rest of the month has just been busy.
• So, yes, May started with much excitement — I was finishing up my second grad school class, my sister was graduating, I was going to get to see some friends in Ohio; it was going to be great. And it certainly started out that way! I submitted my final project for the grad school class on Thursday; it was a little longer than I wanted, but all the extra length was in graphs that I couldn't size down, so I was generally satisfied. Then we arrived in Ohio, my grandfather in tow, on Friday, where we launched into a busy day of helping my sister pack and attending various senior celebrations. I had also made plans to hang out with some local friends Friday evening (skipping one of the senior celebrations that was basically just a chapel service). Sadly, one of the friends came down with a bug last minute and couldn't make it, but I had a pleasant time with the other friend.
• Then it was Saturday, the day of graduation, and the rollercoaster really started . . .
  • To be clear, the actual graduation ceremony went very well. The president made an excellent speech. Other people also made speeches that I don't really remember. I had a good internal laugh about the fact that formal academic garb seems to have not changed much in the last four hundred years. My sister walked across the stage and got her diploma. That was all fine. And walking around after the ceremony to take pictures of my sister and her friends in their robes also went fine.
  • And then — then, while my grandpa and I were on the way back to my sister's dorm (my parents and sister having gone on ahead for various reasons), Grandpa tripped over a parking lot bumper — fell — hit his head —
  • Thankfully, if you have to fall and hit your head, Cedarville on graduation day is a pretty good place to do it — its biggest program is nursing, after all, and between the graduates and their parents, there were multiple people with medical training nearby, including an EMT and a nurse. They were able to check him over (conscious, oriented, all limbs functioning) and keep him comfortable while someone else called 911 and I called my parents (because, as mentioned, someone else was already calling emergency services).
  • It probably didn't take that long (don't panic) for the actually on-duty EMTs to arrive, though it seemed like forever (don't panic). My parents followed the ambulance to the hospital (don't panic), while my sister and I returned to her dorm to try to get all her things packed before her move-out time (don't panic), wondering the whole time what was going to happen from here (don't panic).
  • Eventually, it was determined that Grandpa had broken a couple vertebrae, and while the exact severity and treatment of the injury was still uncertain, we definitely weren't going back to Pennsylvania that day. So, we made arrangements to stay with some nearby friends until we knew what was happening. Sunday gave us no more answers, though we spent almost the whole the day at the hospital with Grandpa. (Well, I wasn't there most of the day, because he could only have so many visitors at a time, and someone needed to do laundry, and I was the most logical person to handle that — but I still visited in the evening.) We knew he was doing quite well considering his injury, that he could walk and move around and was healthy enough to complain about the hospital food. We just didn't know when he could leave the hospital, or if he'd be able to travel, or anything.
  • (Sunday night was also when I found out about the Realm Awards finalist list, via H.L. Burke congratulating me and another person in her Discord server on making the list. It was an interesting day.)
  • We expected to be there most of Monday as well, so I made hasty arrangements to work remotely that day so I could move my last day of leave to Tuesday (when my dad and I could drive back to Virginia). Then, abruptly, the doctors declared that yes, he could leave (thank God), yes, he could travel back to Pennsylvania with us (thank God), and yes, he could go home instead of going to a rehab center (thank God). He'd have to wear a neck brace for a while, but that was more or less expected. So, we quickly repacked what we'd unpacked, loaded ourselves back in the car, and drove back to his house. From there, my dad and I returned home on Tuesday so we could be back at work on time, while my mom and sister stayed to help Grandpa.
• Since then, we've driven up to Pittsburgh two out of the three weekends: once on Mother's Day weekend and once on Memorial Day weekend. My mom's stayed up there the whole month, though my sister came back with us after the Mother's Day trip. Both the amount of travel and the not having my mom around have felt really weird, and I look forward to when things go back to normal, even if all the driving means extra writing time without the distraction of the internet. On the upside, Grandpa continues to do well — he was very active before this happened, and I think that's helping him now. Of course, he's also frustrated by not being able to do things now, but better that than any of the alternatives.
• On the one weekend we didn't go to Pennsylvania, my sister and I went to the Virginia Ren Fest with a friend. That was pretty fun — it's not as big as the Ren Fest in Ohio or Maryland, but they had a nice assortment of vendors, and the location (on the grounds of a winery) was pretty. The one downside is that we managed to go the single day on which they didn't have a joust — just our luck, right?
• Aside from all that, I've mostly spent the month writing and trying to keep up with all the things that need to be done. Work, at least, has been mostly quiet, though it's starting to ramp back up as we move into summer stuff. I'm also nearly done with another embroidery project (most of which was done during my trips to Pennsylvania so I could have something to do with my hands that wasn't scrolling through my phone), this one fanart for a band I like. I'm pleased with how it's turned out, despite a near-disaster when I spilled water on part of the water-soluble stabilizer (oops).

June Plans

• I basically need to do ALL THE WRITING to get my Selkie Story done by the deadline, plus I need to do a cover, tagline, blurb, preorder setup . . . all that good stuff. So that's going to be the bulk of my free time.
• Work will also be busy — there's no big projects, but there are several mid-sized ones, many of which require people from outside the church staff to get me specific information. If you have ever worked in a position where you are reliant on receiving information from people who you cannot directly remind about things like deadlines and the reasons for deadlines, you know exactly why this is stressful. If you've never had such an experience, you are fortunate and should pray you continue to be so blessed.
• (For the record, I continue to enjoy my day job. And I recognize that the reasons behind my needing information from these people means that they have a lot of other things on their minds and plates. It's just . . . very frustrating when I'm prevented from doing my job due to circumstances I can't control, knowing that the same people who aren't getting me the information are the ones who may very well be mad when things aren't done right because they didn't get me that info by when I needed it, even with a month's worth of warning.) 
• Also looking forward to doing some travel to places that aren't Pennsylvania — by which I mean that I'm going to drive eight hours (with my sister) to visit a friend and attend a book signing. It's going to be great. It will make writing difficult. But it'll still be great. I'll also be prepping for Realm Makers in July, which will be a bit less intense than last year since I still have most of what I put together for last year. So that'll be good.
• Finally, I will continue working on my crafts. Not sure what I'll do next after I finish my current embroidery piece, but I have a bunch of ideas, so I'm sure I'll figure something out. Or maybe I'll go back to working on some knitting and crocheting so I can have some new wraps ready for fall. We'll see.

How was your May? What are you looking forward to in June? Do you think that second books in spinoff series tend to be better than first books? Have you been traveling much, or do you have any exciting travel plans? Please tell me in the comments!
Thanks for reading!

 

August 2021 Doings!

Hello all! We're into the last stretch of summer and the beginning of fall . . . and also the last stretch before the release of Gilded in Ice and the other Six Frosted Roses books! If you haven't already, make sure you preorder the Gilded in Ice ebook (unless you're holding out for the print version, which I totally understand). Also, signups for the Frosted Roses blog tour and Frosted Roses ARCs are still open, if you're interested! Your support is always welcomed and appreciated.

And with that, let's get on with the Doings!

Writing!

• I started editing on Gilded in Ice a little later than I anticipated due to various forces beyond my control — but, thankfully, I made far better time than I expected. Case in point: my first week of edits, my goal was to get through five chapters. Instead, I managed to edit at least half of the book — I don't remember the exact amount, since I didn't write it down. (I probably should've.)
• And it's a good thing I got so much done, because the following week I got . . . very little done. Fun fact: if you're sick enough to be stuck in bed most of the day, you don't really get any editing done. (More on that later, though.) Thankfully, I rallied in time to finish that round of edits, write a new chapter, and do a third edit (focusing on language) the week after.
• This past week, I've been working on formatting and word-level grammar and spelling-type edits . . . slowly. This is my least favorite stage of the editing process, so I've been rather more distracted than I was in the previous stages. (It didn't help that I had some very good stories — both on the page and on the screen — calling my name.) But progress is being made! And I hope to have the book done to the point of ordering a proof copy this weekend.
• Also, on a side note: I got a widescreen monitor this month (for non-writing-related-reasons), and it makes editing so much easier. I can have my working document and my beta document up side by side at an easily-readable size on the monitor, and then I have my laptop screen for internet searches, referencing previous versions of the story, or checking things from The Midnight Show. It's amazing. If you have the money and the desk or table space, I highly recommend the investment; it'll make your life way easier.
• On the D&D front, the group I run didn't meet much this month for a variety of reasons, but we did manage to finally finish the climatic battle of the arc! The Defenders of Serys have survived an encounter with a young kraken, and only two people almost died. The module I've been writing is almost done as well; I just need to sort out the climax. (This is one of those modules where I had lots of ideas for the middle bit of the adventure, but no clue what was going to happen in the ending. I do prefer those to the ones where it's the other way round, though.)

Reading!

• Ohhhhhh boy was this a good reading month. Look at all those books! Thirty-five of them! That's more than a book a day! (Ok, two of them are short stories. But that's still thirty-three books and two short stories.) As it turns out, when you have one week with no writing projects to work on and three weeks stuck at home, that translates to a lot of reading time.
• Over half of those books (twenty, to be exact) are by one author: W.R. Gingell. I literally read everything she's published except for four books — one trilogy in which I read the first book and decided I wasn't a fan, and one very early work. Most of those were read all at once, and before you ask — yes, I did have a massive book hangover afterwards because there's no authors quite like Gingell. I'll give you thoughts by series so this section doesn't get too long.
  • I've already told everyone how much I love the Two Monarchies Sequence, particularly Spindle and Masque, which I reread, but I did finally read the newest book, Clockwork Magician! It wasn't my favorite in the series, but Peter also isn't my favorite character in the series, and Isabella and Melchior were both woefully absent. So I'm not terribly surprised by that.
  • I also expressed my love of the City Between novels earlier this month, but thanks to a free Kindle Unlimited subscription that I picked up, I got to read Book 9, Between Family, the day it released! Some of y'all might've seen me raving about it on Facebook and Instagram, but if you missed that, just know that it was truly excellent and brought me much happiness, but I am undone by the ending. Not quite as undone as I was by the ending of Book 8, but still. Undone.
  • The Shards of a Broken Sword trilogy was another very enjoyable fae story. I didn't love it as much as I do Two Monarchies or City Between, but I'd reread it. (It does have dragons in it as well as fae . . . but oddly enough, the dragon-focused book was my least favorite in the trilogy.)
  • Playing Hearts was an interesting take on a Wonderland retelling, but I never got super attached to most of the characters? It's probably my least favorite Gingell — which is to say, it's still better than even the best of some authors I've read, but it's not one I'm going to be raving about anytime soon.
  • Finally, we have the Lady series, which I enjoyed much more than I expected. They're slow, and they're very romance-focused, and both female leads are, I think, intentionally a bit standoffish and prickly? Which should add up to something I don't especially enjoy. But instead, I found myself liking them quite a lot. The first book, Lady of Dreams, feels something like an Austen novel, but sneakier and vaguely Korean and with some fantasy elements mixed in. And then the second book, Lady of Weeds . . . I don't know. It just has a vibe that I really enjoyed, and it's full of mystery that kept me interested even during the slowest bits. I think you have to be in the mood for them, but if you are in the mood, you'll really enjoy them.
• After Gingell novels, the second-biggest category of the month is rereads — nine of them in total. I revisited Pilgrim's Progress at the beginning of the month, which I've been meaning to do for a while. That was an interesting experience; I'd forgotten how much of the dialogue is basically just a theological treatise. Sorcery of Thorns and An Enchantment of Ravens were both as excellent as ever, as were the first three Invisible Library books. (I intend to reread the whole series, but I was interrupted by Between Family.) The Books of the Infinite trilogy was another I'd been meaning to reread for a while, and it was even better than I remembered. Conversely, The Paper Magician was a bit disappointing the second time round, but it was at a disadvantage, since what I really wanted at the time was more W.R. Gingell.
• That just leaves a few non-Gingell new-to-me reads. The Heir and the Spare was excellent — very character-focused, but in a good way. Midnight for a Curse and Dawn Bringer were both a bit disappointing, especially compared to Wrought of Silver and Ravens. Maybe I would've enjoyed them more at another time; I don't know. And then the first two Stariel books were a lot of fun — fae magic mixed with psuedo-rural-England drama mixed with romance. However, I don't think I'm going to continue the series unless they get rave reviews from someone I know; I liked The Lord of Stariel better than Prince of Secrets, Prince of Secrets had a perfectly satisfying ending, and some of the reviews of books three and four make me concerned about where the series is going content-wise. 
• And I think that covers it! I apologize for the length of this section, but if I can't use my blog to rave about all the excellent books I read, what's even the point?

Watching!

• So, what did I watch this month? Pretty much everything except Critical Role, which I'm procrastinating on because the next three episodes are guest player episodes, and I don't enjoy those nearly as much as I do the regular episodes. I'll get to them sometime.
• On the upside, my Critical Role procrastination means I finally started watching Leverage! I'm about eight episodes in (or possibly more if I had time to watch some last night), and I can say with absolute certainty that Eliot is hands-down my favorite character. (Hardison and Parker tie for second place — which is to say, who I like better shifts based on what happened in whatever episode I just watched, so it's easiest to say they're tied.) But I really enjoy the concept of the show, and I think it's well-executed. The heists are clever, the character dynamics are delightful, and there's just the right amount of humor. (Granted, some of it is based on secondhand embarrassment, but so far, I've been able to fast-forward past the worst of those moments without too much trouble.) My only quibble with the show is that Nate and Sophie's definitely-into-each-other-but-not-going-to-act-on-it dynamic is already getting old. I don't always dislike that type of relationship — I was fine with it in Firefly, and I actually write it my stories periodically (it works very nicely with both slowburn and rogue-and-princess romances, which are the two types of relationship I most enjoy writing), but the way it's written in Leverage just . . . it bugs me, y'know?
• Other than Leverage, I watched a few things with my family. We started the month with The Return of the King, which was obviously great (though not my favorite movie in the trilogy). Later in the month, we watched some classic Star Trek (the best of what I saw was "The Journey to Babel," which is the one with Spock's parents in it), the first episode of The Mandalorian (interesting, but slower than I expected; I want to keep watching, but only if I'm doing it with someone), and an old live-action Disney movie, The Love Bug (which was . . . um? it's not a bad movie, but it was weird and I still don't know what to do with it).

Life!

• So, this has been a weird month. It started out fine — business as usual at work, church and D&D on the weekend. Then I came down with what I thought was a bad cold — which was fine. I took it as a sign that I should actually buy an external laptop monitor like I'd been thinking of doing for months, hooked up my laptop to my work's remote access, and worked from home for a week, figuring that I'd be better by Monday. And then my symptoms took a turn for the very-not-cold-like and got bad enough that I thought maybe I should go to Urgent Care . . . where they informed me that I probably did not have a cold and did have pneumonia and sent me to the ER, where the doctor and nurses, after stabbing me with needles far too many times, agreed that I probably did not have a cold and did have pneumonia and that I should not go to work in the morning.
• (Side note, the ER visit and the day immediately preceding the ER visit — when I ended up very dehydrated — were the worst parts of this whole ordeal. The rest of it was tiresome, but otherwise not awful.)
• So, yes. I won't say which not-a-cold virus I had, but you can probably guess. I spent about three days (two due to fever, one due to just being tired) lying in bed, reading books, listening to The Anthropocene Reviewed, and occasionally managing a nap before starting to be up-and-about more on Thursday. By the following Monday, I was operating at about 75%, which was sufficient for me to get back to editing (well, technically I started editing again on the weekend, but I digress, though my supervisor wouldn't let me work from home. (In her defense, that was probably the wiser choice, since it meant I only spent half the day staring at a screen. In my defense, I was stressed about how much time off I was taking, and I knew I was well enough that I wasn't going to sleep during the day, which is what I think she thought I'd do.)
• Thankfully, this week I'm pretty much back to 100%, which meant I was able to go back to work and catch up on all the stuff that hadn't been done for two weeks . . . and also start work on the most intimidating project I've had all year. It's not big, but it's very freeform, and the material that needs to go in it is not terribly conducive to any particular format I've come up with. A solution will be found, but frustration will be found first.
• Outside of the whole being-sick thing, I've started to get back into doing Scripture memorization (and also poetry memorization, just to switch things up now and then). My long-term goal is to be able to pull out applicable and accurately-quoted-and-understood Scripture (and poetry) for various situations without having to look it up (and also to make sure I don't lose my ability to memorize stuff). At the moment, I'm doing one longer passage per week (where "longer" is defined as anywhere from six to twenty-something verses, depending on where natural breaks are and how much of the passage I've previously memorized as single verses), with one week per month dedicated to poetry. It's going well so far, though I think I may have to adjust a few of the passages I have planned for future weeks. I definitely have a much easier time with really long passages when they're poetry or at least poetic rather than prose.
• Right before I got sick, I also made it to my church's how-to-lead-a-Bible-study-group training, which means I'm qualified to start a group! Unfortunately, a lot of my planning got . . . ah, you know. Delayed. So we'll see what happens with that.
• The last thing of note that happened this month was that I finally revisited the Journey video game. I managed to get past the point where I was stuck last time, but then I got stuck again a few levels onward, and I know I kept missing stuff in other levels . . . gah. It's very frustrating, and I honestly don't know if I'm going to finish the game at this point.

September Plans

• Y'all, September is going to be busy. Why? Well . . .
• As I mentioned at the start of this post, Gilded in Ice releases this month, which means I'll have plenty on my plate doing final formatting and edits and preparing for the blog tour. (I have so many posts to write, y'all. I was supposed to work on them in August, but, well, y'know. That didn't happen.)
• In addition, September is the Silmaril Awards! Nomination posts will go up on Monday (so soon! I know!), and we'll have voting midway through the month and the awards ceremonies the last two weeks of the month. (Yes, they will overlap with the Frosted Roses blog tour . . . thankfully, my ceremony isn't until the week after.) I'm SUPER excited for my category this year, but it's also going to be a lot.
• But wait! We're not done yet! Fall is also when things start ramping up at the church where I work, so my workday might be getting a bit busier soon as well. (Or it might not. It's hard to say. It might not really get busier until October, when the new Kid's Ministry Director takes over.)
• I'm also hoping for more regular D&D sessions this month . . . which means I need to finish that module I'm writing. And start on the next module. On the upside, I have plans and at least three weeks of material already finished. On the downside, I actually have to write the plans. I am not the type of DM who can just go into a session like "Well, I have a rough idea of the storyline. That's good enough!"
• And then on the reading front, I'm signed up for review copies of all five of my fellow Frosted Roses, which I'm excited about — plus I want to finish rereading the Invisible Library books, and I really need to catch up on some of my specific reading goals. I think that my epic-length fantasy goal is a wash at this point, but I probably have a chance with some of the others. Probably. Maybe.
• (Plus, of course, the onset of fall means the possibility of cooler weather . . . which means the lure of the hammock may be quite strong on Fridays when I'm supposed to be productive. We shall see how well I manage to resist.)

How was your August? Any exciting plans for September? How was your reading this month? Have you watched Leverage, and if so, who's your favorite character? Do you do regular memorization, whether of Scripture, poetry, or something? Please tell me in the comments!
Thanks for reading!