October 2024 Doings!

Hello, friends! October was a weird month — the first half was honestly fairly chill aside from work stress, and then we hit the weekend of the 19th and everything happened at once. As of a result, I have been very tired. But the blog must go on, so let's review this month's Doings!

Writing!

• I intended for my writing time this month to go towards two short stories and the next Bastian Dennel book. That . . . did not go as planned. I was still very productive! Just not on the projects I intended to write!
• I spent the first week and a half of the month sorting through ideas for the two short stories, even going so far as to outline one fairly extensively and start a different one. Then I was reminded of another project that I had semi-committed to in the past and needed to make up my mind about, so I started poking at ideas for that . . .
• And, thanks to a comment from a friend, I stumbled upon a particular concept, fell in love, and decided to chase the plot rabbit until it stopped running, as I had to write the thing eventually, and the more I do now, the less I had to do later.
• The plot rabbit is still running, and it's produced several more bunnies . . . one of which did turn into a short story for the writing challenge I was doing this month, so there's that. I haven't started writing the book yet, but I've been doing a lot of brainstorming and planning of character, worldbuilding, and plot stuff. It's a Chinese-inspired setting, but not ancient China, and I think it's going to be a lot of fun.
• Otherwise, I continued writing my just-for-fun side project in my spare time, and I wrote a bit more of my D&D tournament arc. It's still not finished, but I've managed to stay a couple sessions' worth of material ahead of the game, so I count that as a win.
• The other big writing news of the month was that I once more had a table at Eat Local, Read Local, an author event held by one of the libraries in the area. That was tiring, but fun. I enjoyed meeting readers and potential readers, and I particularly loved that a few people who bought Song of the Selkies previously came back for Illusion's Reign. That was a definite win!

Reading!

• This month has been both a light and heavy reading month — light because I only finished three books; heavy because all those books were pretty hefty.
• Collusion by H.S.J. Williams was definitely my favorite read of the month. I started reading it literally the day it arrived at my house, setting aside Yumi and the Nightmare Painter to do so (the correct choice, for the record). I posted a couple weeks ago raving about it, so I won't repeat myself too much, but I absolutely loved this book. Getting to see Errance, Tryss, Coren, Tellie, the Daisha, and the rest again was so much fun, the new characters were interesting, the plot was amazing, and the themes of hope, healing, and the dangers of isolating yourself were all so, so good. I look forward to whenever I get to read this one; I know it's going to be just as amazing the second time around.
• Yumi and the Nightmare Painter was also good, though I'm not as in love with it as some of my friends seem to be. I liked the narrative and the themes, and Sanderson did an astonishing job of putting together a life-swap/bodyswap story that didn't give me constant secondhand embarrassment, and of course the worldbuilding was very cool. On the other hand, it took me a good third of the book to really connect with the protagonists, and I didn't always love the narrative voice? Both of those are really just me things, though.
• From there, we transition into spooky season reads with a reread of Black and Deep Desires and a new book that I'm currently reading, The Death of Clara Willenheim. Black and Deep Desires was just as delicious on the reread as it was the first time around, I'm happy to say. Clara Willenheim is a ghostly gothic murder mystery; I'm about halfway through and enjoying it so far, though it recently took a turn that was rather darker than I expected.
• And, of course, I continue to enjoy Dracula Daily, though I kind of dropped listening to Re: Dracula. One form of the story is enough for me this year, and with my head so full of brainstorming, I've been more in the mood for music than podcasts of late.

Watching & Playing!

• Wonder of wonders, I actually watched stuff this month!
• My friends who got me into Star Rail and Genshin convinced me that I needed to watch Yona of the Dawn with them, mostly by promising excellent character development and also the presence of certain archetypes that I absolutely adore. (They are excellent influences, obviously.) Scheduling that has been tricky, as we have three people in two different time zones, but we've managed five episodes, and I'm very much enjoying the show. Hak is my favorite character by a long shot, though we'll see if that changes once the dragons show up. I also like how the show is handling the development of Yona herself, how she's dealing with her grief and finding her strength in a way that seems very natural. Hopefully I'll get to watch the rest soon!
• I also rewatched True Grit with my family, which I didn't enjoy quite as much this time around . . . I feel like the sadness of the ending hit a lot harder this time? Though I also just might not have been in the mood for the story; it was a very spur-of-the-moment decision.
• As for what I'm playing, I'm two thirds of the way through the Liyue region main story in Genshin! This is one of the two regions I was most looking forward to when I got into the game, and I've enjoyed it so far. I am attempting to figure out what Zhongli's deal is, piecing together what the story tells me with bits of information gained from the fandom and my friends' conversations . . . I like him quite a lot (thankfully, as he's the character who my friends mainly used to convince me to start the game), but I am getting conflicting information about who or what he really is. Hopefully I'll find out in the next couple weeks, though.
• (I will also note that, while Genshin definitely has a steeper learning curve on combat than Star Rail did, I am less bad at that than I used to be! And I am getting better! I'm still not good by any means, but I die a lot less than I used to, and I remember to shield a lot more often.)
• The other fun thing about Genshin is the co-op mode, which currently mostly involves me running around after my more-experienced friends, picking up treasures and whatnot while they utterly destroy any enemies that show up (something that is satisfying for ALL of us, for the record). Exploring together is a lot more fun than exploring alone would be — especially since they can show me cool stuff that I wouldn't have found on my own for ages. Probably my favorite two co-op experiences so far were making it to the very top of a particularly dangerous mountain in the first region of the game and making the trek to the second region of the game together, but it's all been a lot of fun.
• This past week, though, I've mostly been playing Star Rail, specifically the version 2.6 story update, which was been a wild ride. I might be mildly traumatized by monkeys and bananas at this point, y'all, and I have definitely been fighting for my life against a particularly catchy earworm of a song. That's said, I enjoyed it — some of my favorite characters are very heavily involved in it, and we have the main Trailblaze trio together again for a lot of the story! The new characters were also cool, and one of my favorite couples in the game had some really nice interactions! I am also inordinately pleased that I was able to get one of my favorite characters (Dan Heng Lunae, for those who play) during his rerun; he has been very fun to play. (And he's narratively appropriate! At least somewhat! That makes me very happy.)

 Life!

• October started off pretty quiet and chill, for which I was grateful — for several weeks, the most exciting thing that happened was that I made some rather excellent basil sourdough bread. It was my first time trying those mix-ins, and I'm quite pleased with how the loaf turned out.
• Then we hit the weekend of the 19th and everything became Very Busy.
• I've already talked about the 19th and Eat Local, Read Local. Again, that went well . . . but I was very tired the next few days, which wasn't ideal, as the following Monday was the first day back at online grad school classes. The class I'm currently taking is Advanced English Grammar, which I chose because I thought it would be mildly interesting and not too difficult. And it has indeed not been too difficult, mostly . . . but it is a lot more technical than I expected.
  • Fun fact: there is an official grammar term ("lexical phrases") for structures like "see you later" and "by the way" where the same words are regularly used for specific functions without being an idiom.
  • Another fun fact: when you start describing grammar rules in the abstract, you end up with formulas, and those formulas look way more like upper-level calculus than they do algebra.
• Anyway. That's happening. It's better than the last class, and therefore we will get through it.
• On a happier note, last weekend a friend and I went to the Renaissance Festival! The one we normally go to was sold out, so we ended up visiting a different one instead that's a little further away, requiring a full weekend trip. That was also tiring, but a lot of fun! I love wandering around the Faire, seeing everyone's costumes and outfits, visiting the shops, and, of course, watching the jousts! This Faire's joust still wasn't as realistic as the Ohio Ren Fest's joust, but it had the best story of any Faire I've gone to so far, and it concluded in a resounding triumph of good over evil. I was truly impressed!
• That brings us up to this past week, which has mostly consisted of grad school, story prep, gaming, work, and recovering from all the driving I did over the weekend. So, pretty quiet.
• Other than that . . . I'm still working on crafting Christmas presents; that's going fairly well (though I am starting to feel the pressure of Looming Deadlines). I also started work on a new fleece capelet, this one a lovely green-and-black plaid with a properly deep hood! It's going to be so cozy when it's done. That said, I'm hand-sewing a lot of it because I didn't feel like arguing with the sewing machine, so it's going to take a bit.
• And on the D&D front, we're still playing through the mini-campaign; I think we're probably about halfway through at this point. That continues to be fun, and I'm starting to get the hang of my character's mechanics. I didn't get much done on finishing up my character for the next campaign, but I still have time. (She's playable. I just need to figure out some extra backstory stuff.)
• I think that about covers it! Again, October was mostly a quiet month; it just got very exciting at the end there.

November Plans

• Grad school continues to exist and will also continue to dominate however much of my brainspace and free time I allow it to. Given what happened last winter and spring when I let myself stress over it a lot, I'm going to try to keep it to a more reasonable resource allocation this time around. We'll see if that works.
• Otherwise, I plan to start drafting the new story I mentioned up in the writing section (with a low daily wordcount goal), and I'll continue working on D&D writing and brainstorming a story for the DOSA Files (which I really need to figure out sooner rather than later).
• I also need to either speed up work on some of the Christmas presents I'm making or decide that some of those gifts will be slightly smaller than originally planned. We'll see which one wins.
• I don't have any author events planned; I was hoping to go to Doxacon, but they're meeting in DC this year, and I do not want to deal with that. Alas.
• Work will probably be busy for the next two months as we prepare for Advent and Christmas. Still, I'm hoping to do enough in advance that it won't be terribly stressful — and holidays do have the advantage of being very similar year to year, so I have a good idea what to expect.
• And, of course, I will continue to have D&D, reading (maybe delving into some mysteries this month), and gaming to help me relax and get my stress levels down. All in all, it should be a good month.

How was your October? Any plans for November? Do you prefer to watch shows and movies by yourself or with others? 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!

 

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!

 

October 2022 Doings!

Hello hello hello! You may notice that, unlike a lot of my posts lately, October Doings is going up on the early side. For one thing, today is actually closer to the end of October than next Friday will be . . . but also, next Friday is going to be taken up with a blog tour, so here we are! While we only have a few weeks to cover, they've been a busy few weeks, so let's get going.

Writing!

• So, the good news is that BDPI #4 is still coming along pretty smoothly. I'm averaging a little over a chapter a week, which is a slower pace than some of my books, but still respectable, especially considering that a lot of my weekends this month have been occupied with non-writing activities.
• The other good news is that I got to participate in a short story writing challenge on another site and got my piece in on time. It's a story that I've had in my head in various forms for a while, based on a few of my favorite Celtic songs. I misremembered the deadline as being a week later than it actually was, so the writing ended up being done in a rush, and I didn't get as much time to edit as I wanted, but it did get done, and I'm pleased with the result. I may go back and polish it and see if I can submit it somewhere at some point.
• The bad news is that Through a Shattered Glass edits and formatting are coming . . . slowly. I finished another round of edits, but still need to do a little more polishing before I can switch to a formatted document. That's another project I'd been planning to do on weekends that didn't work out. I also worked on some of the interior graphics for the book, though nothing is finalized yet.
• I've done a little bit of D&D writing, though not a ton. Nothing much to report there.

Reading!

• Another slow reading month, though I did get some good books in. I finished rereading Veiled Rose, which meant rediscovering one of my favorite Goldstone Wood quotes — I had forgotten which book it was in. That quote is, of course, this one:

"Maybe it does have a happy ending. At least, when it's actually complete. I mean, this part of it is sad. But maybe something good will come from it still? I suppose you have to read all the legends together to know for sure, but I don't know all of them. This one is sad, but there might be a story out there somewhere to make it happy."

• Very much in the vein of the "old stories" quote from The Lord of the Rings that I love so much. Anyway, after Veiled Rose moved onto Moonblood, which is one of my favorite Goldstone Wood books, so that was a delight. I did not, however, continue my reread further, as I had library books that were coming due soon.
• Those library reads that I turned to next were Delicious in Dungeon #10 and Diana Wynne Jones's The Time of the Ghost. The new installment of Delicious in Dungeon was quite good, and I liked it almost as much as I did the early books at the start of the series. We also got some backstory on the conflict, which was fun. The Time of the Ghost was rather dark (especially for a Jones book), and not my favorite of her works, but it was still a fascinating, twisty read. I also spent most of the book thinking I knew a major spoiler for it, and then discovered at the end that I had either misheard or misremembered said spoiler, so that was an interesting experience.
• My other new read of the month was an ARC of H.L. Burke's upcoming novel, A Superhero for Christmas. I'll have a Friday 5s post about it next week, so I won't go far into my thoughts, but I will say that Burke has yet to disappoint me with any of her superhero books.
• I finished out the month by jumping into another reread, this time of the League of Princes series by Christopher Healy (which is not, in fact, called the Hero's Guide series, no matter how much I try to call it that). A friend of mine on another site was reading (or rereading?) them and posting quotes, and it made me want to revisit them, which was definitely a good choice, even if getting back into the first one took a bit. I finished the first book, The Hero's Guide to Saving Your Kingdom, and I'm currently reading book two.

Watching!

• So, after years of seeing other people reference and obsess over it, I've finally watched Over the Garden Wall! Or, you know, I'm in the process of watching it, with the goal of finishing it by the end of October. I'm enjoying it, though so far, I don't love it to the same degree that others seem to. It's a fun show with an excellent edge of creepiness. Also, Beatrice is kind of a mood, not going to lie.
• I will note that, despite the fact that I'm not a superfan or anything, I sorta want to do a genderswapped Wirt cosplay simply because I want to have his cloak (or a real life version of it, you know) for myself. It looks so fun and comfy! Quite frankly, if I find the money for good materials, I would probably wear it for more than just cosplay.
• Otherwise, I'm still watching a little Fullmetal Alchemist here and and a little Critical Role there and a lot of short-form YouTube content and not much else. I've been tired lately, which means it takes me longer to get in the zone of writing, which means I have less time to chill afterwards . . . plus, I'm not really enjoying the current Critical Role arc, and that was the primary thing I was getting excited about watching for a long while.

Life!

• There's no doubt about the highlight of the month — it was, without a doubt, the day that Wyn Owens and I met up at the Renaissance Festival! We had a grand time wandering the village, visiting the shops, enjoying delicious food (including crepes! I love crepes so much), chatting about our writing (and getting excited when we encountered anything that reminded us of our characters), and watching three different jousting events. We even coordinated costumes so we could attend as Ailsa and Siobhra from Wyn's The Dark King's Curse! (After all, if you already have the outfits, it would be a shame not to wear them together.)
• So, yes. It was a lovely day, and I also think that particular Ren Faire is one of the better ones I've visited. It's definitely my favorite setup — quite large, and situated in an area with lots of trees — and the joust was tied with Ohio's in terms of quality. Ohio's seemed a little more authentic, but this one was more dramatic and managed to work in a storyline without it seeming terribly forced. I was sad that neither of the knights I was rooting for won, though.
• Outside of the Ren Faire, I actually had something going on almost every weekend this month aside from the first weekend (when the remnants of Hurricane Ian meant everyone was hiding inside for the most part). The weekend before the Ren Faire, my family went to a fall party held by our next-door neighbors, which was nice. I don't really know most of our neighbors aside from two couples, but the event and the food were good. And the weekend after, a couple from our Bible study had a bonfire at their house, so we went to that. It was lightly attended, but the families who were there were some of the ones we're closer to, and there was plenty of hot apple cider, so that was fun.
• (I also have an event this weekend — my church is doing Trunk or Treat, and I'm running a trunk, so the Interdimensional Curiosity Shoppe will return, with some adjustments. But that obviously hasn't happened yet, so I can't say much else about it.)
• Things at work have been picking up with fall events and the approach of Advent, specifically the Advent newsletter. It's not unmanageable, but it's definitely keeping me busy! I was pleased that people actually sent me the majority of newsletter pieces well in advance of the deadline, rather than a day or two before the deadline, so that's making things much less stressful.
• And on the food front, our Bible study is currently studying Ezekiel, so I tried my hand at making Ezekiel bread. It turned out pretty well, even if it did overflow my pans — it's a very dense, cakey bread, but it has a good taste. I don't think I'd want to eat nothing but that for a year and a half, but at the same time . . . y'know, there are worse things to have to eat for that long.
• Finally, for those curious . . . no, I still haven't finished my scarf. I'm working on it. There were just multiple weeks when I missed a time when I normally would've worked on it. At this point, I will be happy to get it done by the end of the year.

November Plans

• First and foremost: I am not doing NaNoWriMo. Besides the fact that I'm not in the place for a mad-rush writing marathon right now, I've been moving away from the NaNoWriMo organization as a whole. While it was a great help and a lot of fun during a particular season of my life, I don't care for a lot of the new aspects they've added since the site change, and more importantly, I don't agree with many of their recent policies. So, no NaNoWriMo.
• My October writing goals will carry over into November, as I continue to draft BDPI #4 and prepare Through a Shattered Glass for publication in December. My new aim is to have TaSG be ARC-ready by midway through the month, which I don't think is unreasonable, especially if I can find a good point in BDPI #4 to switch to having TaSG be my weeknight project and BDPI #4 as my weekend work.
• At work, I expect a busy month — it's the start of the holiday season, after all. I don't think it'll be too bad, though, barring calamity. And I do enjoy all the holiday design projects, especially the church Christmas card!
• Outside of writing and work, I don't have a ton of plans other than Thanksgiving, when my sister and one of her friends will be home on break. I think we'll be getting together with our Bible study for that as usual, which I'm looking forward to. (I may already be trying to decide what to make. My sister has requested pumpkin bread because I forgot to give her the extra loaf I made when I visited back in September . . . but also, pie. It's a tough decision.)
• Finally, on the reading front, I'll probably be flipping between books for review and trying to finish up at least some of my rereads and reading goals before the year ends, assuming I don't get too distracted by mood reads. We'll see what happens.

How was your October? Any exciting plans for November? Did you go to any Ren Faires this fall? Have you watched Over the Garden Wall? Are there any characters you want to cosplay just because you think their outfit looks fun? Please tell me in the comments!
Thanks for reading!