June 2024 Doings!

Hello, everyone! June has, thankfully, been pretty peaceful. That's not to say that nothing happened — in fact, one or two quite exciting things occurred! — but mostly it's been very routine. One of the most exciting bits of the month was in the world of writing, though, so let's jump in there.

Writing!

• Let's start with some excellent news: the first draft of Daughters of Atirse #2 is finished! We wrapped up with 34 chapters and just shy of 174K words, which is pretty substantial and a little longer than I expected, but not much longer. It might have been longer still had my characters not decided to go slightly off-script in the climax — I know, normally that makes stories longer, but there's an exception to everything. I also got to have a nice writing day and some treats at a cafe on Juneteenth (which I had off from work), so that helped the process along.
• I finished that last Sunday, June 23. I then took a couple days off from writing as a break before jumping back in to do some light edits (mostly fixing some details that shifted between the first half of the book and the second and rewriting a scene or two), which are going well; I'm about a third of the way through those. Once I finish edits, I'll send it off to beta-readers.
• In other exciting news, the DOSA Files anthology that includes my short story "Save{Point}" just released this past week! Even if you missed the Kickstarter, you can now order it in ebook or paperback form. There's also a blog tour that just wrapped up, but I think you can still enter the giveaways — click here to visit the tour masterpost and find out where to find all the things.
• All my writing energy has been directed towards Daughters of Atirse #2, so I don't have much to report on other projects. I haven't written more D&D, but we did have a couple sessions that were pretty fun, and some of what I read this month inspired some more noodling on the Secret Star Project. And speaking of what I've been reading . . .

Reading!

• I spent most of June rereading the Murderbot series (and first-time reading the latest book, System Collapse). I was happy to find that these books were just as good or better on the reread, and I very much enjoyed the latest installment as well. It's very much an affirmation of the power of stories and storytelling while also being tense and exciting and having all the good things one would hope for from this series. The series is available in Kindle Unlimited, if you're interested in checking it out. (Obligatory content warning: there's a good bit of strong language, some violence (though not graphically described), and a fair number of secondary characters who are some flavor of not-straight (though the fact that the POV character is extremely not interested in any of that helps downplay it enough that it doesn't bother me)).
• Outside of Murderbot, my month was also mostly rereads: I finished rereading Howl's Moving Castle (delightful as ever), revisited the graphic novel of The Adventure Zone: The Crystal Kingdom (in preparation for reading the next installment in that series), and am continuing to enjoy Dracula via Dracula Daily.
• I did have some other new-to-me reads, though. When a Dragon Comes Courting was a fun little fantasy romance novellette; I enjoyed it, though the narration emphasized physical attraction a little more than I would've liked. I've also been reading Beka Gremikova's Unexpected Encounters of a Draconic Kind anthology (not pictured, as I'm still reading it as of the writing of this post), which I've meant to get around to for a while. Like in most anthologies, some stories are better than others, but on the whole, it's a good collection.

 Watching & Playing!

• Not much to report here — the only things I've watched this month were a couple episodes of Hogan's Heroes while at my grandpa's house, and as far as podcasts go, I've mostly been listening to Dracula Daily and Lateral. I did try some of Myths & Legends at the recommendation of several friends, but didn't vibe with it the way I hoped I would (alas). Why do I like Overly Sarcastic Productions videos and not Myths & Legends podcasts when they're very similar? No clue, but that's how it is.
• On the gaming front, I spent most of June playing through the Xianghou questline in Honkai Star Rail (which I started back in May, and which was the reason I got into the game in the first place). That was undeniably awesome — I'd heard a lot about how good it was from my friends, and I knew I'd like it on some level because it involved characters I really wanted to meet (and was predisposed to like), but I was not fully prepared for how epic the climax was. Or the pre-climax. Or several of the character quests. It was probably a good thing that I was home alone on the nights that I played the pre-climax and climax because I legitimately screamed at points; it was just that good. Of course, it helped that these particular plotlines focused a lot on two of my favorite characters . . .
• (I will say that I was very grateful to have friends who've already played this arc and could make sure I didn't skip anything important. There are a few pretty important sidequests that I definitely would've missed had people not let me know "Hey, you need to do this thing now, not later," and the storyline would not have been as fun if I'd messed that up.)
• Also related to Star Rail, I ended up starting a group chat with two of my friends who are also into the game so we could talk about the game and I could send them updates on my playthrough and reactions to stuff that's happening (since the Xianghou arc is also their favorite), and that was a fabulous choice. It turns a single-player game into a social activity, and getting to chat and share my experience with them while I play makes the game so much better.

Life!

• June was, thankfully, pretty quiet on the whole — the "big event" of the month was visiting my grandpa over Father's Day weekend. I haven't seen him since Christmas, so it was nice to go out and visit. This trip was a little different than most, though, as my parents went on a retreat the week before we went to my grandpa's, and they drove straight to his house from the retreat center. That meant two things: first, that I was responsible for bringing dessert for the weekend, and second, that I was driving up by myself (not a problem, but long solo drives are always a big of an Event for me). Both things went well, thankfully. I made German Chocolate earthquake cake (an upside-down cake with a cream cheese layer baked in), which everyone said was good, and I only missed one turn on the drive (near the end, and it was extremely poorly labeled).
• Also related to baking: my Baking Yesteryear recipe for the month was chocolate mayonnaise cake, which turned out really well! It was my first time making a full-size Bundt cake, and I was absolutely thrilled when it didn't stick at all to the pan. The cake itself tasted pretty good too, though I can't recommend the icing method included with the recipe — it had an odd flavor to it that I didn't really enjoy. But, again, the cake was good, and I'd definitely make that again.
• Work has been going well. It's been a quiet month, for which I am grateful. There were a few days when there were only two or three people in the office, but I'm not complaining about that.
• And on the crafting front, I'm still working on my Cosmere pin hoop. It's been kind of slow going, since stitching through felt and fabric together is difficult, plus Bible study was cancelled a couple times, and I normally get a lot of embroidery done there (since I use it to keep my hands occupied during discussions).
• I think that about covers it — like I said, June was a quiet month, and I'm grateful for it.

July Plans

• Once Daughters of Atirse #2 is with beta readers (which should be soon), I plan to give myself a few weeks' break from writing. That's not to say that I won't write anything, especially since I do need to work on my D&D stuff — I'll just mostly be doing it as I feel inspired, and I won't stress if I don't make my day's wordcount (because I mostly won't have a set wordcount to make). I'll definitely prep my next D&D adventure, and I may do some noodling on side projects. I'll also work on some writing adjacent projects, like the cover for Daughters of Atirse #2 and commissioning character art.
• Of course, most of my writing break will be taken up by one very exciting thing: Realm Makers! I'm so excited to be back at the conference for a third year, especially since I'm hoping to visit some family and friends on the way out to St. Louis. I'm looking forward to seeing my author friends and writing buddies (and meeting some of them in person for the first time), hearing what the speakers have to say, and, of course, finding out the Realm Awards winners. I've been hyped for this trip for months, and now it's almost here! (And I'm praying very hard that nothing goes wrong at the last minute.)
• For those attending and curious about buying my books or getting them signed: I'll be consigning some of my titles through the Realm Makers store, and a lot of those will be pre-signed. However, I'm happy to sign (or personalize) books if you catch me during the conference, and I think that I should have a stable signing spot during the Book Fair on Saturday night.
• My blogging semi-hiatus will continue for most of July, though I do plan to post my mid-year book roundups next week, and I may end up doing one review post midway through the month. We'll see.
• As for work, the new associate pastor is starting this month, so hopefully that will go well! Between that and the fact that my trip will mess with bulletin schedules, things may be a little more exciting than they have been . . . but I'm not terribly stressed about it. It'll still be less crazy than some other seasons.
• I think that covers all my big plans. I'll continue with my reading, crafting, and baking goals as I have been doing. The only other semi-significant thing happening is that I need to make some decisions about the fall semester of grad school (namely, which classes I'm taking next, and when I'm taking them), which is . . . a little stressful, but it'll be fine.

How was your June? Any plans for July? Will I be seeing you at Realm Makers? Please tell me in the comments!
Thanks for reading!

 

October 2023 Doings!

October is over, and only two months remain before the end of 2023. No, I can't believe it any more than you can, but there are two calendars right beside me, and both have only two pages left before they run out of days. (Which means I should probably make or buy some new calendars for 2024, now that I think about it.) And those last two months will go fast, given that we're just about to the holiday season . . . but I'm getting ahead of myself. Before we go rushing on ahead, time to recap October's Doings!

Writing!

• We'll start with the good news: Eat Local Read Local went very well. The event had an excellent turnout — over 500 people, if I recall the stats I was given correctly — and I sold a very decent number of books, considering that it was my first time actually doing the selling and that I ended up in the YA/Kids tent instead of the YA/Adult tent (where I think I would have done better). Plus, I got to meet several other authors who I didn't know were local, and several friends came out to see and support me. (One person came all the way from Maryland — that would be the lovely Wyn Owens, who surprised me so much I had to sit down. Then she and I got a late lunch/early dinner after the event and had a chance to chat, and that was fun.)
• On the downside, I didn't accomplish either of my writing goals for this month. Oh, I wrote, certainly! I put down bout 20,000 new words in October, and I had some very good writing days towards the end of the month.
• Unfortunately, only about 4,000 of those words were on Bastian Dennel #4, as first my characters were fighting me, and then other things got in the way of working on it.
• That means I got 16,000 words on my short story challenge piece, and if you can't tell, it's kind of not a short story anymore. It is, in fact, threatening to become a novella. I'm trying to finish it, but these things take time. It's also very character-driven, which means everything takes longer. (On the upside, I am really enjoying the story. It's a platonic Beauty and the Beast wherein the Beast gets stuck with a pair of orphans staying in his manor, and I think you can guess where this is going. Accidental adoption arcs are just delightful.)
• That said, part of the problem is also that there was a week straight where I didn't write because of grad school stuff. But I'll discuss that in the Life! section.
• Even if I didn't hit my goals, though, I did get more words on pages, so I can be pleased with that.

Reading!

• Given that this was October, I had every intention of going all-in on spooky season reads. That . . . did not happen. The closest things I had to spooky reads were my reread of the Miss Sharp's Monsters trilogy (10/10; they were good the first time around, and they're better on the reread) and my foray into the Dresden Files graphic novels, which were surprisingly good. Specifically, I read Welcome to the Jungle and Ghoul Goblin, both of which take place early enough in the series timeline that I'm not going out of order. I wouldn't give them a blanket rec, but they were fast, fun, exciting reads, and they're a bit lighter on the Content that I dislike in the main series.
• Aside from the Dresden graphic novels, my other new reads were almost all at the beginning of the month. I finished Of Fire and Ash fairly early in the month, and my opinions remain the same as what I said in September: it's a good book with cool worldbuilding, but it's not a new favorite.
• I did enjoy Fugitive Telemetry, which is the sixth Murderbot Diaries book. Sci-fi murder mysteries are fun, and Murderbot remains a delightfully snarky and uniquely non-human narrator. As for A Little Persuaded, well, I already posted my thoughts on it, but in short, I liked it.
• As for the rest of my rereads, they were all roughly as good as I expected them to be. I didn't enjoy Magyk quite as much as I did when I first read the series, which was sad, but not a surprise. On the other hand, the first three Knight and Rogue books remain excellent. They're also the series that got me hooked on the fantasy-mystery combo, so revisiting them has been fun.

Watching!

• Time for watching stuff is still hard to come by, but I did block out enough ten-minute chunks of time to rewatch Over the Garden Wall. I started in early October and finished on Halloween, which feels appropriate. I still don't get as into it as other people do, but it's a good show, and it's light enough to watch when I'm tired, but also has enough depth to be satisfying.

Life!

• The highlight of the month was my visit to the Maryland Renaissance festival, at which I had a grand time! I love Ren Faires, and Maryland has an especially good one. I got to see several shows this time, including one on various street gambling cons throughout history that I thought was very interesting. Plus, I watched all three jousts, which were fun. They're not fully scripted like some jousts are, but they also do have a storyline running through them. Sir Keegan, in whose section I sat all three times, didn't win, but he was definitely a crowd favorite!
• Of course, Ren Faires are even better with friends, and getting to see Wyn Estelle Owens at this one was absolutely lovely. She arrived a bit later than intended, but we still had a nice time exploring and chatting.
• Outside of the Ren Faire, the thing that took up most of my time and energy was grad school. If you read last month's Doings!, you may remember that I mentioned that the assignment I was working on then should have been boring but straightforward, but instead ended up far more difficult than expected. That pretty much consumed all my free time (and some of my not-so-free time) for a week and a half, and it got to the point where the professor had to actually tell me to back away, take a day or two off, and calm down so that I wouldn't go mad. Thankfully, I did finally get it done, and done well at that. It just took rather longer than intended.
• Then I had a week's break before my current class started up. Said class is on grant writing. I'm currently in the second week of the class and I really, really don't like it. Basically the only thing going for it is that the workload isn't horrible. Otherwise — the topic stresses me out, the professor has yet to impress me (and also has yet to grade my first week's assignment, which I submitted a week ago), and it's just not a good time.
• On the work front, I've been kept pretty busy with regular weekly stuff, the Advent newsletter (it's almost Advent, y'all; can you believe it?), and all the various October events. At least the livestream issues seem to be staying resolved, and I have some extra tools now to try if they pop back up.
• I also did some baking this month and tried out two new recipes. One is a pumpkin cake that I made for work; it turned out very moist and tasty. I did substitute a maple glaze for the original frosting, and I think that was a good choice. The other new recipe was King Arthur Baking's Rustic Sourdough, and that was also good. It's not as strong a sourdough flavor as my usual recipe, but it's much faster, and it makes two loaves instead of one, both of which are good things. I don't think it'll replace my usual recipe, but it's a good alternative option.
• Oh, and I have to mention the D&D campaign I play in. That's been intense lately. The last several sessions have involved multiple attacks on my character's family, which resulted in certain members of that family (notably, my character's dad) temporarily dying, as well as our party sorcerer fighting a young blue dragon almost one-on-one . . . and the almost is because the dragon called in help. Not the sorcerer. (Our guy won, for the record. It was magnificent.)

November Plans

• I'm starting off the month with another author event. Tomorrow (or November 4, for those not reading this post the day it goes up), I'll be at Doxacon, which is a very small one-day convention for Christian fans of fantasy and sci-fi. I'm sharing a table/booth/something with Heather Halverstadt (who I also shared a table with at Eat Local, Read Local) and L. Jagi Lamplighter, both of whom attended as vendors last year. It should be a good time.
• As for my actual writing, I had hoped to start my Song of the Selkies prequel this month . . . but alas, I have other manuscripts I need to finish first. My new goal is to wrap up both my challenge story and Bastian Dennel, PI #4 by the end of November so I can start the SotS prequel in December. I know I'm close to the end of both of those stories, so I think that's doable.
• Work and grad school will probably continue as they have been. Even though November and December are busy months at work, I am looking forward to getting to do Advent and Christmas designs — I've said this before, and I'll say it again: this season has the best colors and imagery. Hopefully it'll be enough to make up for the frustrations of the grant writing class.
• November is also both my birthday month and Thanksgiving, both of which I'm looking forward to. I'm especially excited for Thanksgiving — we'll have the usual Bible study potluck, but more importantly, my sister should be coming down for a few days. I cannot wait to see her again.
• As for my reading . . . I should be working to catch up on some of my reading goals, but realistically, I'll probably continue my rereads and otherwise mood-read my way through the month.
• And . . . yeah. I think that's everything.

How was your October? What are you looking forward to in November? Did you go to any Renaissance Festivals this year? What are some of your favorite seasonal media (aside from Christmas books or movies)? Do you have more of a problem with your books turning out longer or shorter than expected?
Thanks for reading!

 

August 2023 Doings!

Hello! Welcome to September! I'll be frank; I'm really glad that August is over. I'm not happy that summer is almost over, to be clear — just that this bit of it is done. I feel as if the theme for this August, at least for me, was something along the lines of "Well, it could be worse." It's not that nothing good happened, and it's not that the worst thing possible ever happened, but I did spend a lot of the month, especially the second half of it, feeling worn and stressed and worried. And, of course, when you're in the middle of being worn and stressed and worried, you can't remember what it was like not to feel all those things, and I didn't really stop feeling any of those things for longer than about three hours at a time until the evening of the very last day of the month (yesterday evening, if you're reading this the day it was posted). But! It could have been worse! Some things were actually very good! Like the writing, which we're going to talk about now.

Writing!

• As one might expect, my dominant project this month has been editing Song of the Selkies. I received the rest of my beta feedback over the first week-and-a-bit of August, and pretty much all of that was very good and very helpful for figuring out how to make the story the best it could be. I hoped that I'd be able to finish the first edit by the end of the month — not an unfeasible goal, since I knew most of my first draft was pretty clean — but I ended up having to rewrite more scenes and write more new bits than I expected, so I was only able to get up to about Chapter 24 as of the writing of this post. Still, that's over half done, and the back half should be easier than the front half. It almost always is, at any rate, since in the first half of most drafts, I'm still somewhat figuring out the story, characters, and world, while I usually have those well-sorted by the end. I'm wrapping up the month with 78,034 words edited, 13,126 of which are newly written or rewritten (plus whatever I did last night after writing this blog post).
• Even though I am not where I want to be with the editing, I will say that I still love this story so, so much, and I am so excited about it. Literally all I want to do right now is work on it, not just because of deadlines, but because I really enjoy it, and I'm having such fun spending time with the characters, and I want to be able to share the story and characters with y'all. Has it been stressful at times? Absolutely yes. But I still love the book.
• (And I'm currently commissioning character art for it! I'm working with a new artist, and she seems very good. I've seen a finished piece for one character and roughs for several others so far, and I just love her style and the way she's managing to capture my characters. I'm super excited to get to show off the finished pieces!)
• Also on the topic of Song of the Selkies: would you like to help spread the word about this book or any of the Stolen Songs releases? Signups are now open for both the release party and review copies. Check out the release page for a full list of all the books and links. Word of mouth is very important in helping indie books succeed, so whether you're sharing premade graphics and a blurb on social media or going all-in with interviews, reviews, and guest posts, I really appreciate anything you do to share about Song of the Selkies and the other Stolen Songs stories.
• Outside of Song of the Selkies, I did work some on Bastian Dennel, PI #4 at the start of the month. I have another two chapters penned (about 3,786 words), bringing my chapter total to 27 and my plot almost to the climax. Once Song of the Selkies is released, BDPI #4 will go back to top priority, and I'm looking forward to finishing this up.
• Speaking of finishing things: also at the start of the month, I finished writing my D&D Feygate adventure! I also started running said adventure, and it's been a lot of fun so far. We had one session that was 90% the players trying to solve a longish riddle that will partially determine how the rest of the adventure goes, and I am really proud of how well they did with it — they even managed to come up to an answer to part of it that was way better than what I originally planned. One of the party members also decided to adopt a Displacer Beast kitten and is now trying to tame it, which I . . . did not expect. We're going to see how that goes, but if anyone has any advice on how to approach this (or how to approach non-familiar party pets in general), please feel free to share.

Reading!

• I read exactly two physical books this month. Everything else was on my Kindle. That's not a statistic I usually include on here, but the Kindle app has started doing these reading challenges — perfect week, perfect month, read so many books, read so many days, read books in X category, that sort of thing — and of course only Kindle books count. And in June or July, I came really close to a perfect month, and the perfectionist in me was like "No, we gotta get it this time. We're gonna do this." So . . . lots of Kindle reads.
• The two physical reads, if you want to know, were The Battle at Hackham Heath and Spinning Silver. Hackham Heath completed my Ranger's Apprentice reread, although it wasn't a reread. It was ok? I didn't love it but also didn't hate it. Spinning Silver is a Rumplestiltskin retelling (with shades of other fairy tales), which I read because several of the Realm Makers faculty recommended it. It's one of the books where I'd learned all the spoilers, and I wanted to see how they happened in context, and then the actual context turned out to be nothing like what I expected. It was a good book, though I didn't always love the writing style and I really wish the author or someone had labeled the shifts in POV.
• The highlight of the month was, of course, Wet Behind the Ears, the latest in W.R. Gingell's Worlds Behind series. This one had lots to love, including some great character moments and the return of a few old friends — well, technically they returned in the previous book, but we got more of them here. The story was excellent, and now I'm more excited than ever for book 4.
• Dream by the Shadows and Network Effect were also both very good. Dream by the Shadows is a dark, gothic-y fantasy centered on dream magic. I requested it as an ARC because, well, dream magic, plus I was promised a Beauty-and-the-Beast style enemies-to-lovers romance. And I can say that it did deliver on both of those things, though not entirely in the way I expected. Though the beginning was very dark and hard to read (particularly because I was super tired and stressed when I started it), once the story started spending more and more time in the dream realm, things improved, and I really did enjoy it. I originally planned to post a full review on my blog, but, uh . . . there was a fade-to-black scene towards the end, so I don't know now.
• Anyway. You know what had no fade-to-black scenes (except when the main character literally collapsed a few times)? Network Effect, the fifth book in the Murderbot Diaries. This is possibly the best entry in the series yet, and I had a very hard time putting it down. There's so many good character dynamics and character arcs, the action bits are excellent, and the . . . antagonistic force, for lack of a better word, is cool. Weird, but cool. Ten out of ten; probably will reread.
• As for the rest of the books pictured in this month's reading, they were all varying levels of good (none worse than average), but I don't have much else to say about them.
• Last thing to note on the reading front: since I finished listening through all of the Dear Hank and John podcast, I decided to work through the backlog of Re:Dracula, which is basically Dracula Daily but in audio drama podcast form. (If you don't know what Dracula Daily is: it's an email subscription where you read the classic novel Dracula in real time, and it's one of the best things the internet has come up with in the last ten years.) At this point, I'm caught up with Re:Dracula to about a quarter of the way through August, and I'm very much enjoying it. The voice actors all did a marvelous job. I will say that I don't like the voice actor for Quincy Morris, as his take on the character's accent makes him sound like Jim Weiss — granted, I like Jim Weiss, and his CDs were a major part of my childhood, but it is not at all right for Quincy.

Life!

• So, yes. Here's where all the "Well, it could have been worse" comes in.
• To be perfectly fair, the start of the month was pretty good. Work was quiet, I was having video calls with my sister every couple days so I wasn't lonely (even though I was home alone), and the fact that I was still waiting on beta feedback meant I had some spare time to watch things (mostly YouTube), play Hearthstone, get to bed at a reasonable time . . .
• And then I got rear-ended in a parking lot, and everything kind of went downhill after that.
• Before anyone worries: I'm fine. Everyone else involved is fine. My car wasn't even badly damaged — just a bit dented, and it's fixed now. But I had never been in an accident before, and I definitely freaked out, and thank God my dad was there to take the lead on things like getting the other person's information and asking for a witness statement from someone and all that sort of thing. And thank God as well that I have good insurance so I could get my vehicle fixed and get a rental in the meantime . . . but the fact that it could have gone worse didn't mean it wasn't scary.
• It didn't help that work had just gotten a lot busier and a lot more stressful, or that those trends continued through the rest of the month. Half the content for the fall newsletter was delayed longer than I'd planned for it to be (for good reason, but good reasons don't change mailing deadlines). We had two short-notice funerals in the space of a week. Preparation for fall ministries and activities started ramping up. We discovered that the system we're using for our new online directory sends alarmingly-worded emails to people whenever you add them to said directory, which means I had to run damage control. (Note: I don't actually mind running damage control on this; it mostly just involves sending emails, and I'm good at those. But it's still an extra thing to worry about.) And almost every time I thought I'd have a quiet day, half a dozen new projects suddenly appeared to drop themselves in my lap.
• (On the upside, we're way ahead of schedule on materials for the Stewardship campaign — almost everything is ready to send to the printer, and that event isn't until October. So, yay for that.)
• Additionally, remember how I mentioned that my mom went back to Pennsylvania at the end of July to stay with my grandpa for a few weeks? A few weeks turned into the whole month and nearly turned into until the middle of September due to the hospitals not being able to get their act together until the last minute. She did get to come home for one weekend in the middle of the month, which was good . . . but that doesn't change the fact that I missed her when she was gone, and it didn't take away the stress of the two-ish weeks in which we all worried she wouldn't be able to come home for a month and a half. (She's home now, though, which is why I'm actually able to be semi-optimistic again.)
• Oh, and because all that wasn't enough: I started grad school two weeks ago, still in the midst of worrying about whether or not my mom would be able to come home before the turn of the month, still worrying about my car . . . that was not a good week, let me tell you, and it was a rough start to the semester. The first couple days were so bad that I genuinely wondered why I'd thought this was a good idea — and while I'm used to feeling that way in the middle of a class, it seemed like a bad sign that we were starting at that point. Everything felt like Too Much. Nothing on its own was more than moderately hard, but everything together, on top of what I already had going on, seemed like a crushing weight. I made it through the first week, though, and the second week might be a little better — we'll find out once I actually manage to do the half of the assignments that I keep putting off because other things take priority.
• And for the record, I do feel bad complaining about all this because I know so many people who have it worse. Like, I am getting off lightly in every way. I'm stressed about when my mom is coming home? My mom's the one away from home, taking care of my grandpa, not knowing when she'll be able to leave. I got into an accident? Two of my friends got into worse ones — at least my car was driveable and I was able to get in touch with insurance and get a repair appointment quickly. I'm tired from cooking and laundry? I'm doing a fraction of what other people do, and their additional workload isn't any lighter than mine (and they're doing it with chronic pain or fatigue besides). I'm stressed about work deadlines and projects? I'm not the one running the events; I'm not the one going through the personal stuff that's causing the delays. I'm worried about my editing pace? I know people who've written books this close to the publication date and done just fine. I'm overwhelmed by grad school? I'm only taking one class, and I don't even have any big papers or exams yet. I have no right to be upset.
• But telling myself all that just makes me feel worse — and feeling worse just makes everything harder.
• (All this may sound like I'm fishing for pity, or sympathy, or something. I'm not. I honestly debated whether or not to say half of it because, as I said, lots of other people have it worse, and I didn't want to complain. But . . . I write these Doings posts for myself as well as for others. I write them so I can look back and remember where I was. So I'm leaving it in for future me.)
• I don't want to end this section on a downer note, so let's talk about something more fun: the latest from the D&D group I play in (not the one I run), wherein we finally defeated one of our nemeses. It was glorious — he's a schemer who's spent the last several months (out of game) hitting us wherever it'll hurt the most. He's the reason why we're wanted in about half the campaign world (because he framed us for murder), the reason why there's a war on . . . and, most recently, the reason why one party member decided to essentially disappear and retire, because he took one loss too many. We arguably hate him more than we hate the actual big bad villain of the campaign. He's gotten the jump on us so many times . . . but we managed to find out where he was and teleport in on top of him, and the whole thing was just immensely satisfying. Oh, and we may have made some tentative allies among the drow, and I am very excited about that in- and out-of-character. A lot of this campaign has been centered around making friends out of enemies in order to deal with bigger enemies, and I'm glad we might be managing to do that with the drow as well as other groups. Also, my character somehow became very rapidly attached to one of the drow — a young woman in whom I think she sees a lot of herself and her younger sisters — and I really hope I can continue to develop that. I think it's going to give lots of good storytelling opportunities in the future.
• Oh, and I learned the basic strokes of modern calligraphy through a free online course my mom told me about. That was kinda cool. I thought about going on with the next course (which I would've had to pay for), but September's going to be busy, so I think I'm going to wait on that. It was fun, though.

September Plans

• Song of the Selkies needs to be finished and uploaded by September 15. So . . . that's going to be my next two weeks. That and preparing for the release party.
• (Storms, is it really only two weeks?)
• After Song of the Selkies is done and released . . . well, we'll see. I may take a week or two off, or I may jump straight back into writing BDPI #4 (though at a slower pace). It'll depend how I feel and where I am with other projects.
• Almost as exciting: I get to see my sister this month! Our Bible study and the Bible study she goes to (which are connected via many close friendships) are doing a joint retreat, so we'll all be going on that. I get to spend a weekend in one of my favorite places with some of my favorite people; it's going to be good. Hopefully I can actually enjoy it and don't just spend the whole time stressing about Stuff That Needs to Get Done.
• Another happy thing: September is also Silmaril Awards month! I will be hosting a category again, even though some might question where I'm finding the time to do so. I like it too much not to do it, though. However much stress it adds, the fun balances it out. Keep an eye out for nominations opening next on Monday!
• Less happily, grad school will probably eat up a lot of time as well. I'm hoping that it'll get better now that I have fewer other things to be stressed about, though. I do think this class has the potential to be interesting if and when it shifts away from just being Workplace Writing 2.0, and I'd like to be able to give it enough thought and attention to actually find things in it to enjoy, rather than just pushing through one assignment and another and another.
• As far as work goes . . . I do not foresee anything slowing down until about January. Fall is also my least favorite church season to design for; it's hard to find good imagery for most of the annual events, and the color palette's arguably the hardest one to work with (at least for me). Still, I'm ahead of the game on Stewardship (as already mentioned) and on graphics for the big fall service project (because we've already started promoting it), so that should help.
• Last on the list, I'd like to do some baking since I didn't get to do any in August. In particular, I really want to make bagels again. We'll see if that happens or not, though.

How was your August? What are you looking forward to in September? What's your favorite audio adaption of a book? Are you signed up for the Stolen Songs release party? Please tell me in the comments!
Thanks for reading!