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!

 

August 2024 Doings!

Hello, everyone! After the craziness of July, I'm happy that August was a little quieter — which isn't to say it wasn't busy, but it was a more mundane, routine kind of busy rather than the kind you get when you're celebrating and driving halfway across the country and back. Most of the excitement this month has been on the writing front, so let's jump in there!

Writing!

• The big writing-related news of the month was, of course, the cover and preorder reveal for Illusion's Reign! You can click there to get all the details, but in short: Illusion's Reign is Onora's story and is a prequel to Song of the Selkies. It will release September 27 as part of the Lost Kerchiefs Arista Challenge Group, and it's currently available for preorder on Amazon. I'm very excited, but that probably goes without saying.
• Aside from that, August has mostly been dominated by edits. I spent most of the month working through the big edit/partial rewrite of Illusion's Reign, following guidance from my beta readers. Most of the book was already in pretty good condition and just needed sanding and polishing, so to speak,, but I did end up adding an extra chapter and rewriting large chunks of some other chapters. Then I took a couple days off before jumping in for editing Round 3, which focuses more on word choice and sentence-level issues, and which I finished this past week. Now I'm just waiting for my physical proof copy to arrive so I can do proofreading. All in all, I've been able to stay pretty much on or ahead of schedule, so I'm happy about that!
• Other than Illusion's Reign, I've been working on my next D&D adventure, and I actually made some really good progress . . . thankfully, since we finally got to the start of that new adventure in our last session, which means I can now properly refer to it as the tournament arc. I have enough material prepped to fill the next few sessions, and I think I'm mostly past the hard part of getting the rest put together, so all in all, I'm in a good place . . . as long as I don't get overconfident, anyway.

Reading!

• Yeah, it's been a really light reading month. To be fair, that's partially because The Ward took a solid two weeks — it was a much longer book than I anticipated. It was very good, though! I loved the blend of suspense with found family elements, and the alternate-history world was cool. I'm not sure if this is technically historical fantasy or alternate-world magical realism, but either way, it was very well done. It also satisfied while still making me curious enough to want to find out more about the characters, so I'll absolutely be watching for the next book in the series.
• My other new read of the month was an ARC of Her Fake Superhero Boyfriend, H.L. Burke's upcoming release. It should probably go without saying that I loved this one! Burke's SVR books never fail to delight me, and this one included a take on one of my favorite tropes. Besides that, getting to see more of KC was fun, and I absolutely loved Mira and Mira and KC's dynamic together. They're just so good for each other.
• I do not know why I reread Furiously Happy other than my brain said "I want this" and I said "Ok then." I liked it roughly the same amount as I did the first time around. Nothing much to say here. At least it counts towards my goal of 15 non-speculative-fiction books for the year.
• I continue to enjoy Dracula Daily and Re: Dracula, of course! I have somewhat fallen off keeping up with most of my other books-by-post subscriptions, but I'll catch up eventually . . .
• Finally, I'm currently reading Splintered Mind by W.R. Gingell, since I got my Kickstarter backer ebook copy earlier in the month. I'm about a third of the way in and liking it very much so far!

 Watching & Playing!

• So, the other reason why I read less than usual this month is because my gaming sessions kept going later than planned . . . which anyone else who's played Star Rail will understand, as this month was exclusively taken up by the Penacony storyline, which was a roller-coaster from start to finish. There was much screaming (and also some tears) in the group chat I have with two of my friends who got me into the game.
• Unfortunately, I can't talk a lot about the storyline because it is very twisty and I don't want to spoil anything. I thought I knew most of the major spoilers going in, but I somehow managed to dodge the biggest ones. (That definitely contributed to the screaming.) All I'll say is that it was so good and so hard to put down, and I loved so many of the characters. I think Acheron is my favorite of the Penacony crew — she's an incredibly dangerous woman who has every reason in the world to be a doom-and-gloom edgelord pessimist, but who is instead one of the kindest and most hopeful characters in the game, second only (I think) to Jing Yuan. She's the best. There were a lot of good characters, though.
• So, yes. That was really good, but it was also a really long storyline, and I only just finished it this week (not counting the sidequests). If you play Star Rail and want to talk about it, feel free to message me.

 Life!

• As I said earlier, August was a lot quieter than July, and thank God for that! Outside of writing, my main excitement happened early in the month when my friend Wyn and I met up for an escape room and lunch (and so I could give her back the costume pieces I'd transported to Realm Makers for her). We very narrowly succeeded at the escape room — we had to use all the hints, alas — but we had fun! Plus, it's always nice to get to hang out with friends in-person.
• Also exciting: the D&D campaign I play in reached the climax this month! We've been wrapping up loose ends, gathering allies, and confronting our big bad once and for all. We've also had some really wonderful character moments in the process, including a point at which our ranger had to push back against her (lawful evil) dad's plans for her, giving up some pretty impressive power-ups in the process. At the moment, we're between stages of the climatic battle, but it's been pretty epic so far. Also, my paladin has once again accidentally picked up a cursed item . . . but the curse in question is partially nullified by another of her items, so it kind of turned into an advantage for her. (For the D&D players who were curious: she's under the effects of the Barbarian Reckless feature, but she has adamantine armor, so she has double the chance to get hits, particularly critical hits, on enemies, while they just have a slightly higher chance of getting a normal hit on her. For a paladin fighting a lot of undead, that's a risk worth taking.) I'm still getting a kick out of the fact that she's the only one who seems to get cursed items, though, and that both times, she's gotten the item in question right before a major boss fight.
• Outside of that, life has mostly been business as usual. Work is gearing up for fall kickoff and giving campaign, but the workload so far has been manageable, despite my fears. On the crafting front, I'm starting early on Christmas presents (for once), and I finished several embroidery hoops so they can be displayed. Now I just have to figure out where to put them.
• I did bake some fun things! Specifically, I finally made asiago and sun-dried tomato quick bread, which I've wanted to try for ages. We happened to get some sun-dried tomatoes from a Bible study friend at the start of the month, so I baked a loaf and took it back to Bible study last weekend. It was very tasty, and I definitely ate too much of it (oops). I also made crispy coconut oat cookies, which are essentially ANZAC biscuits from Baking Yesteryear with some extra butter, and those were yummy as well.
• So far, I think only doing one grad school class this semester was the right choice. This time last year, I was already really stressed, even just starting the class. This year has been a lot better, though the fact that I finished the draft and main edit on Illusion's Reign closer to when I intended to also helps. I still do have issues with the lure of busy-ness, especially as I don't like disappointing people or saying no . . . but I'm doing better.

September Plans

• I get to start the month out by seeing my sister (and some other friends) and visiting one of my favorite places, so I'm very much looking forward to that.
• After that, though, we're tackling a very busy and exciting month! As already mentioned, Illusion's Reign releases at the end of September, and while I have a lot done already, there's always more to do: proofreading, uploading final departments, getting stuff ready for online promo, sending out ARCs, and so forth. Hopefully, though, that'll be less stressful this year than it has been in some past years.
• Additionally, September sees the return of the Silmaril Awards! Nominations open on Monday, September 2, and I'll be hosting one of the categories again. Which one? You'll have to wait and see . . .
• No grad school classes this month — that doesn't start until October — but I do need to order textbooks sometime sooner than later. Work will also continue to be busy for the same reasons as it was in August.
• I'm hoping to make it to the Renaissance Festival sometime in September as well, since that's when most of the theme weekends are. If not, though, I'll go in October; it'll be fine. And, of course, September will probably see the ending of the D&D campaign . . . not the group, though; we already have plans for characters for the next adventure! (Which reminds me, I need to finish some backstory stuff for my character. And by "backstory stuff" I mean a family tree and notes on other relationships, because I like coming up with that kind of thing and it makes the DM's job easier.)

How was your August? Any plans for September? Are you planning to go to any fun events — Renaissance Festivals, fall fests, or anything else — this fall? And have you preordered Illusion's Reign yet? Please tell me in the comments!
Thanks for reading!

 

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!

 

May 2024 Doings!

Hello, everyone! I'm happy to say that May has been a better month than April (and far superior to May 2023), though it did start out with a certain amount of drama. I am very relieved that it's effectively summer now and I can have some time to not stress about grad school. But I'm getting ahead of myself; before I talk about general life stuff, let's see how my writing is going.

Writing!

• First of all, an update on the DOSA Files anthology. The Kickstarter was successfully backed to the second stretch goal, so paperbacks will be shipping sometime mid-June, and the audiobook is officially in the works! If you missed the Kickstarter but still want a copy, no worries — you can preorder the ebook on Amazon, and the paperback will be available for purchase June 27. We'll be doing a blog tour to celebrate the wide release of the anthology, so if you want to help spread the word, please click here and sign up.
• As for Daughters of Atirse #2, I am still not quite finished, despite my best intentions, but I am closing in on the climax and the end of the book! Just a few chapters left! My wordcounts weren't quite where I wanted them to be — I was hitting somewhere around a thousand most days, but not much higher, and there were more than a few days with counts in the 400–600-word range. Still, I made very good progress, and I'm trying to focus on that rather than berating myself for not having been done with this a month ago.
• In more exciting news, as you might have heard earlier in the month, Song of the Selkies is a Realm Awards finalist! I'm very excited to have made it to the top five (especially considering what other books SotS was competing against — there were some big names and amazing stories on the Long List!), and I look forward to finding out who the ultimate winner will be at Realm Makers in July.
• Finally, an update on my spare-time projects — which, to be clear, I work on when I either can't work on Daughters of Atirse or I'm already done with my Atirse writing for the day. I finished the Travel Interlude for my D&D group, but I have not gotten back to working on the next adventure. I'll be honest; the fact that this group hasn't met at all in May kind of tanked my motivation for doing D&D writing.
• I'm also poking at another project that's still in the fun planning/ideating/worldbuilding stage, referenced in my Taleweaver's Desk update as the Secret Star Book. Normally, I wouldn't be doing even this much on a new project when I still have Onora's story and D&D writing to focus on, but I'm allowing myself to work on it here and there as I have time as a reward for surviving my most recent grad school class. I don't know exactly where that's going to go, so I won't say more about it for now, but I am having fun with it, as it's very different from most of my other projects.

Reading!

• April may have been my month of highly-anticipated releases, but May was still a pretty good reading month. The highlights of the month were H.L. Burke's new release, Game On, Brandon Sanderson's Tress of the Emerald Sea, and my (terribly self-indulgent) reread of The Goblin Emperor. I already reviewed Game On, and my love for The Goblin Emperor is well-established (it's a cozy epic fantasy about a forgotten young man, barely out of boyhood, who gets put in the midst of court intrigue and politics and who chooses to not play the games and instead be kind and I love it, I love it, I love it), so I'll focus mostly on Tress. I am so behind on reading it, but I do see why people raved about it so much (far more than they seem to have raved about the other Secret Projects). I enjoyed the characters — Tress herself is a delight, and I really liked most of the supporting cast as well — and had fun spotting the various Cosmere connections. The magic system with the spore-seas and the abilities of the different spores was also fascinating and really cool both visually and conceptually. Oddly, though, the one thing I didn't love was the storytelling voice in some sections; even though I think it's cool that the story is narrated by Hoid, and while I liked most of his asides and flavor commentary, some sections just didn't hit right for me.
• The other highlight of the month, of course, is the return of Dracula Daily, a Substack newsletter allowing readers to read Dracula in real-time as a series of letters, diary entries, telegram entries, and other similar types of installments that land in your inbox on the appropriate day. This is the third time I've read the book this way, and I enjoy it every time.
• I also continue to enjoy my reread of the Chronicles of Prydain, especially since I read my two favorites in the series this month. The Black Cauldron features one of my top three favorite characters in the series (Adaon, the only one of the three who isn't part of the main band), while The Castle of Llyr is more generally a favorite because I like the story.
• Mistress of Wardwood is an anthology of stories related to The Erlking's Daughters, and it was also really fun. My favorite of the collection was "Inheritance," which focuses on Enzella and Micah, but all the books were really good. If you read The Erlking's Daughters and you want the anthology, you can get it by signing up for the author's newsletter! (That will also get you Aeronwy's Stolen Child, which is a reverse changeling story that I think sounds really fun and have pretty high on my TBR list.)
• As for the last two books pictured, The Song of the Rose and The King's Captive were both good stories, though they didn't wow me. To be clear, I can see other people really enjoying them, but neither was quite what I wanted from their respective concepts. I may still read some of the other installments in the two series, though, as there was enough I liked to get me curious.
• I'm wrapping up the month by being thoroughly self-indulgent once again and rereading Howl's Moving Castle (not pictured, because I'm in the middle of it just now), because it's May and I was tired and vaguely grumpy the last time I needed to pick a new book to read, and either of those on their own would normally be a good reason for me to reread this, and so both together managed to overpower all the should-reads. It is, as ever, delightful.

 Watching & Playing!

• In addition to being the start of Dracula Daily, May also features the return of Re: Dracula, a podcast audio drama form of Dracula following the same real-time format as Dracula Daily. This is my second year listening, and this time around, I'm doing a bit better at actually listening to the episodes as they release (though I still tend to get behind on weekends). We're still pretty early in the season, so if you're looking for a new podcast, I highly recommend checking it out!
• I'm also continuing to enjoy playing Honkai Star Rail; as I've said before, it's a pretty good motivation to buckle down and get my writing done earlier in the day or evening instead of getting distracted by YouTube videos. (I may have complained about lower-than-ideal wordcounts, but trust me, the fact that those counts still mostly average around 1K is thanks to Star Rail motivation, not in spite of the game.) I did finally start the third main quest line and met one of the characters I've been most looking forward to meeting (Jing Yuan, to be specific). I actually got into the game after two different friends both raved about him. As both friends tend to have excellent taste in favorite characters, I figured I needed to find out more about him for myself, and so far, my impression is that he is indeed the Actual Best.
• My sister and I also took advantage of Memorial Day weekend time off to play more of Portal 2 Co-Op. We've done everything now except the secret sixth stage and had a grand time of it . . . though it did take us forever to get through the last two levels, one because we kept dying and one because we couldn't get the stupid portal where we needed it. Still, we finished the main game, and it was fun to spend time with her that way!
• I did actually watch a few things this month — well, rewatched, anyway. We watched Romancing the Stone back around Mother's Day while my sister was here, as we haven't seen it in a while and my sister wanted an adventure-type movie. Then I watched Charade (aka probably my favorite non-fantasy movie in existence) with my parents on Memorial Day weekend. Both were fun; I don't have much to say about them that I haven't already said.

 Life!

• Praise God from whom all blessings flow, my editing and publishing grad school class is done. The last couple weeks of the class were more frustrating than I expected or than they needed to be (mostly due to communication issues and disagreements about how to interpret the final project instructions), but I got through them with a good grade, so I am grateful.
• And right after my class ended, my sister came down to visit over Mother's Day weekend! She arrived in time to meet us at Bible study, then stayed until Monday morning. Getting to see her was lovely, and we had a really nice time with her.
• Work was also generally quiet, as we're still in the lull between Easter and summer and people were out of the office a lot for either travel or training. The one exception was that our associate pastor had her last Sunday on May 19, so the week leading up to that date was pretty busy. We're all sad she's gone, but her role is being filled by another member of the programs staff, so I think the transition should at least go pretty smoothly. And we didn't have any tech issues on her last Sunday, despite a near miss with the livestream sound! (This might not seem significant, but our tech has a tendency to malfunction on or around significant Sundays, plus we had a substitute running slides and sound, so I was more than a little nervous and was praying very hard against any issues.)
• Work being chill and grad school being done has given me a little bit of extra free time and energy. Some of that has gone towards resting, and some of it has gone towards weeding and reorganizing my bookshelves. My scheme of having all my nonfiction and classics on one bookshelf and all my fantasy and speculative fiction on the other two was foiled by the fact that my textbooks are too tall for the shelf where I wanted to put them, but at least I won't have random stacks of books in front of other books. I'm not quite finished, but I'm nearly there, and I'm still holding out hope of having a free shelf where I can put owned-but-unread books so they're easier to find and prioritize.
• On the baking front, I made up for missing my Baking Yesteryear recipe in April by making two things this month. First, I made dream bars, which . . . well, people said they tasted good. The recipe didn't say to put parchment in the pan, but I should've done so anyway because I couldn't get my spatula under the crust to get the bars out in one piece, and I also think I chopped my nuts way too finely because my bars looked nothing like the picture. Then I made peanut butter styrofoams, essentially peanut butter meringues. These also didn't look like the picture, but they tasted good! And given that it was my first time making any cookie in that family, I'm counting them as a definite success!
• I've also been doing some fun stuff with crafting. Early in the month, I learned that one of the local librarians is into weaving and has a few small looms for weaving bands/straps. She was willing to bring them to the library so I could see them and try them to decide if I wanted to get into the hobby myself (and also for story research purposes). So, a few weeks after that, I got to try an inkle loom and a card loom! As I said, both are band looms, so they're making narrow straps rather than a full piece of cloth, but the inkle loom is larger, and you raise and lower the threads by hand, while the card loom is smaller and uses stiff cards with holes in them to raise and lower the threads. Neither is the kind of thing I could carry around and do wherever I happened to be, so I don't think this will turn into a major hobby, but I'm still toying with trying to make my own card loom so I can do that as an on-and-off thing . . .
• Aside from that, I crocheted my mom an African violet for Mother's Day, and I'm really pleased with how it turned out. I've since made the pieces for two or three more of them, but haven't gotten around to assembling them yet. Now I'm back to embroidery, working on a pin hoop for my Cosmere pins. (Fun fact: embroidering through a double layer of fabric is really hard on your hands, especially when one of those layers is felt! But I am managing.)

June Plans

• First of all, a housekeeping note: I will be taking June and July as a semi-hiatus from blogging. I'll still do my main yearly/monthly posts like Doings, my summer releases list, and my Mid-Year Book Celebration, and I'll do some kind of post for the DOSA Files release, but I won't be posting regular Friday 5s. This is partially for practical reasons — July is going to be super busy for me — and partially because I want to take a bit of a break. If all goes well, I should return to my regular posting schedule in August, hopefully with a bit of a buffer built up.
• My primary project for the month is finishing up Daughters of Atirse #2 and getting it out to beta readers. I am optimistically hoping to have it drafted by sometime in the vicinity of June 8 or 9, then take a week off to rest before doing fairly light edits and sending it on to beta readers. Sending the story out at an earlier stage actually worked well for Song of the Selkies, and I'm hoping it'll work better still if I get the book out further in advance of when it needs to be release-ready. As far as other projects go, I should make progress on my next D&D adventure, and I hope to continue poking at the Secret Star Project when I have spare time for it.
• At work, we're starting summer programming, but we're also in a transition period between the previous associate pastor leaving and the new one moving into that position, so we're a little less busy than we normally would be around this time. Not that I'm complaining; after this winter and spring, I'm still appreciating any quiet seasons I can get.
• As for the rest of my month outside of what I've already said, my main plans involve seeing family, continuing with my crafting, baking, and reading goals, and finding opportunities to rest and recharge (and also attempting to hide from my allergies, which seem to be worse than normal this year).

How was your May? Any plans for June? Are you reading Dracula Daily or listening to Re: Dracula? Is this a busy season or a quiet one for you? Please tell me in the comments!
Thanks for reading!

 

June 2022 Doings!

Hello, y'all! June is ended, July is here, and I have another month's worth of Doings to report! But first, a quick bit of housekeeping: I'll be taking a blogging break for most of the month of July, both because I want the extra bit of attention to focus on Bastian Dennel, PI #4 and because Realm Makers, writing, work, and family stuff mean I'll likely be pretty busy. I will still post my Mid-Year Book Celebration/Book Roundup next Friday as usual, and I'll be on the socials, but otherwise, things will be quiet for the month. I haven't yet decided what to do about the On the Taleweaver's Desk update, but I may push it off until early August, since it would normally go up the same weekend as Realm Makers. We'll see.

Writing!

• Writing-wise, this month's focus has mostly been on Bastian Dennel, PI #4, which is currently title-less. In contrast to Through a Shattered Glass, which I wrote very rapidly, this one is coming along quite slowly. I spent almost a week working through the initial outline until I got stuck, at which point I decided — y'know what? I know who did the murder. I know why they did it. I know what clues I need to lay and some red herrings to slip in. Let's just get this story started.
• (Realistically, I think this was the best option. The problem was one that wouldn't be easy to solve without knowing the story better than I did at the time, so hopefully things will come together once I get closer in the actual draft.)
• On the Through a Shattered Glass front, the book went out to beta readers early in the month, and I've been slowly getting feedback from various people. I haven't really read most of that feedback because I've been focused on BDPI#4, but I look forward to doing so.
• And on the D&D side of things, I did just enough prep to cover the two times we met over the course of the month, plus the start of our next session (whenever that ends up being). The first of those two sessions went about how I expected it. The second . . . well, I didn't really know how my players would react to the situation, but I don't think I was expecting what actually happened? In a good way, though. I also figured out how I think I want to approach large-scale combat, which is good, because that's coming up pretty quick.
• Oh, and I got to have some fun designing author swag (business cards, stickers, and bookplates) in preparation for Realm Makers! That was exciting, though also stressful once I realized how expensive sticker singles can be. I eventually figured stuff out, though, and everything so far has looked very nice.

Reading!

• I expected that this would be a month full of rereads. That said, only about a third of them were the rereads I expected.
• I started the month by finishing up my Jackaby reread. That went well, though I don't think I liked the second half of the series (the last book especially) as much on the reread as I did the first time around, particularly since I've grown more familiar with one of the central myths and am now annoyed at how Ritter handled said myth.
• The other main rereads of the month were about half the Chronicles of Narnia, sparked by the fact that we watched the movie version of Prince Caspian and that made me want to read the actual book. And then I figured I might as well reread some of the other books that I've been thinking of revisiting . . . Lewis's style is a major shift from most of what I've been reading lately, but it's been fun to go back to these old favorites.
• In between the rereads, we had three new-to-me books. The Fork, the Witch, and the Worm is a collection of short stories from the world of Algaesia, and it was . . . fine? To be honest, I feel like it's the least interesting out of everything I read this month.
• The other two new reads are much more exciting and were both last-minute impulse reads. Free-Range Knitter was something I picked up on a whim at the library and ended up quite enjoying. It very much falls into the genre of "Unexpectedly popular 2000s blogger memoirs," but, hey, it was an enjoyable read, and it had some nice observations about knitting and life and people.
• And then there's The Goblin Emperor, which abruptly shot up from somewhere in the depths of my TBR list after I saw a dozen-odd fanart pieces on a friend's social and realized that I needed to read this book immediately. It was, let me tell you, one of the best decisions I made all month, because this book is so good. It's not particularly fast-paced, and it's mostly concerned with the main character figuring out how to be emperor and navigate an unfamiliar and not particularly friendly court and grow into the person he's meant to be, and yet I stayed up long past midnight one night reading it. There's intrigue and mystery and occasional assassination attempts, but most of the book is very character-focused, and . . . I just love it, ok? Possibly because I really love the main character, Maia, who is an absolute sweetheart. He was never supposed to be emperor, but now that he is, he's trying his best to be a good one and to not repeat the mistakes of his predecessors. (I'm also very disappointed that there's not a true sequel — the other books in the world are about a side character and don't really have anything to do with this story.)
• Oh, and I'm still reading Dracula via Dracula Daily . . . and I may have signed up for a bunch of similar serial story e-newsletters. I have no regrets, but I may when they all start at once in six months.

Watching!

• Glory hallelujah, we are done with the Reani episodes of Critical Role. I'm sorry; I recognize that the player was trying to do something interesting, but I just did not vibe with her. I am pleased with my decision to go back to Campaign 2 instead of pushing on with Campaign 3, though. It's been fun to be back with the Mighty Nein. I'm currently halfway through Episode 69, and I've enjoyed the last few episodes, particularly the developments with Fjord.
• Aside from Critical Role, I watched a couple movies this month: a rewatch of Prince Caspian, as I already mentioned, and Jurassic Park, which I had never seen before except for clips and snippets. My roommate enjoys JP, though, so I was excited to see it. I liked it, though I did end up hiding behind a pillow during a few moments when I suspected there was going to be something particularly gorey on the screen. I can definitely see why it became such a cultural phenomenon.
• I also started watching Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, though I'm only a couple episodes in. A friend helpfully pointed me towards the best place to watch it, and I'm trying to get through it in relatively quick fashion. It's nice to have something to watch where the commitment is 20 minutes plus ads instead of an hour or better. I will have to get used to the voices, though, as there's exactly one character who sounds like I imagined him. Colonel Mustang and Al are the two who throw me off the most, though. (You would think Mustang would be the one who I expected, since I knew Travis Willingham voiced him, but nope! Every time he says anything, I'm like "Wait. What? Oh, right." I'll get used to it, I suppose.)

Life!

• The main themes of this month have been "Sarah makes stuff!" and "absolutely NOTHING happens when it's supposed to unless we paid in advance for it." It's fine.
• I actually did a fair bit of baking this month. I started June with my first sourdough loaf using fresh herbs from the ones we planted in May, and that turned out very well, though I probably should've chopped the herbs a little smaller. Then, a bit later in the month, I gave focaccia a whirl and was pretty pleased with the result. (I also made some regular rolls, but, y'know, I've made those a dozen times before.)
• I intended to get a lot of cosplay prep done in June as well. Unfortunately, that didn't go quite as well. I did finish my flowy-sleeved top (it's far from perfect, but it'll do what I want it to do), and I found a few of the other items I needed, but I didn't make as much progress on either dress as I wanted to. Apparently, purple is not an "in" color right now (so I haven't been able to find any purple dresses in stores, let alone ones with pockets), and I kept hitting a particular delay on the dress I'm making — specifically, I needed my sister to help me drape a pattern, and she was continually not available at the same time I could do work. On the upside, we did eventually resolve that, so I have a pattern. Now I just need to cut everything . . . and sew everything . . . and make adjustments . . . and embroider things . . . yeah. There's a lot left to do. At least this weekend is a long one.
• One of the highlights of the month, though, was just last weekend, when my sister and I got together with a friend to do an escape room! This one was a little harder than the one we did last summer, but I actually feel like it went somewhat better — if nothing else, we got out with more time to spare, probably because everyone had at least a little experience with how these kinds of puzzles work.
• At work, things have alternately been super quiet (because half the office is out) or comfortably busy. We have made progress on some of the big projects, though, so that's good. They're going slowly, but so do most things that involve change.
• Oh! D&D news! The group I play in had our first really big boss fight, which was super exciting. We were taking on our warlock/fighter's patron (an aberrant dragon), which involved gathering reinforcements and traveling to another plane and all sorts of stuff. It was pretty epic, especially the final fight — especially since the boss ended up having, figuratively speaking, two health bars. But we survived! With minimal insanity! And leveled up twice! And we got our first-ever legendary item!
• I think that about covers it. June was definitely a much quieter month than May, but you know? That's far from a bad thing.

July Plans

• REALM MAKERS! We're now in the month of, and I am SO HYPED. There's still a lot left to do — cosplay prep, finishing up some of the swag that I didn't complete last month, figuring out some final logistics, figuring out if I need to pre-sign books (since Kendra E. Ardnek will be selling my books alongside hers) and so on — but it's going to be good. I'm excited to learn, but I'm arguably more looking forward to the opportunity to meet others in the writing/author community.
• Most of my plans revolve around Realm Makers, but aside from it . . . we'll have family visiting midway through the month, which should be nice. I'm looking forward to that.
• Work will probably continue to be quiet, since we'll have people out on either mission trips or vacation.
• Writing-wise, I'll be splitting my time between Through a Shattered Glass edits and Bastian Dennel, PI #4 drafting. I don't know yet what that split will look like, but I'll figure it out once I see how much editing needs to be done.
• And on the reading front, most of my book choices will probably be influenced by the various adult summer reading programs I'm doing through local library systems. At the moment, I'm attempting to essentially do three challenges (two systems, two variations within one of those systems) with no overlap, but I may put in some retroactive overlap if we get towards the end of the summer and it looks like I'm not going to make one or more of them.
• That seems to be everything. There may be something I'm forgetting about, but if there is, oh well. I'll remember it tomorrow night, probably.

How was your June? Any exciting plans for July? Will you be at Realm Makers (either virtually or in person)? Please tell me in the comments!
Thanks for reading!

October 2021 Doings!

 Hello, everyone! October is nearly at an end — a couple days left, true, but close enough — and that means it's time for another month's Doings! post. While this wasn't nearly as eventful as August or as breakneck busy as September, there was still plenty going on to tell you about!

Writing!

• This month's been pretty quiet on the writing front — no surprise there. After September's madness, I needed a month that was a little easier to manage. I did finish up the D&D module I was working on, other than making maps for the final combat, so that's ready to go starting in November! I've had some of the stuff in this next module in mind for absolute ages, and I'm super excited that I finally get to put it in action and see how my friends react.
• Outside of D&D, I wrote a Halloween-ish short story for a challenge/contest thing on another site. I probably won't post it on here at the moment (just because the challenge was so recent and it was very specific to that site), but I may bring it back for next year's Halloween on my main blogs.
• And that about covers it! I am in the process of starting Bastian Dennel #3, but I haven't made enough progress to really say anything else about it. As a reminder, if you want an overview of everything going on in the world of my writing, you can check out my On the Taleweaver's Desk post that just went up last week!

Reading!

• It's also been a rather light reading month, which is a bit unusual — usually less writing means more time for reading. But not so much this month, apparently.
• The highlights of this month were The Anthropocene Reviewed, Gothel and the Maiden Prince, and The Martian, which is kind of remarkable since only one of those is a fantasy novel. The Anthropocene Reviewed is a book of essays by John Green, modified from the episodes of the podcast of the same name, and it's lovely and poetic and thoughtful in a way I could never be no matter how long or hard I tried. Quite frankly, I think Green is a better nonfiction writer or essayist than he is a fiction writer, which should come as a surprise to no one who knows I watch vlogbrothers regularly but have only managed to finish reading one of Green's fiction works. I know I'm probably in the minority in this regard, but so be it.
• Moving on! Gothel and the Maiden Prince is the latest from W.R. Gingell, whom we all know I love dearly. Gothel was not by any means my favorite of her works, but I did enjoy the characters and their dynamics and the twist on why Rapunzel and Gothel are in the tower. Plus, it's got that lovely pairing of the dark, intimidating, commonly-assumed-evil, hard-because-life's-hard character with the sunshine sweetheart that's so delightful whether it's romantic or platonic, so how can you argue with that?
• And The Martian, while containing far stronger language in far greater quantities than I prefer, was just a lot of fun. It's got a great storyline. It's got a lot of actual science, but not so much that it becomes overwhelming — or, I didn't think so. (That said, I like science when I'm not having to name chemical compounds or memorize three hundred and fifty-nine biological terms, so your mileage my vary.) It avoids the trap of having the main character be annoyingly good at/knowledgable in everything, and it has a lot of humor (much of it sarcastic), and it's just fun. It's like Randall Munroe's What If and How To, but with an actual plot and much more focused in terms of what type of science you're dealing with. I'm definitely going to reread it, is what I'm saying.
• Otherwise, I had a fair number of rereads: The Candlestone in Dragons in Our Midst (still not my favorite in the series, but I like it better than I used to; I'm saving Circles of Seven for Halloween), M is for Magic (better the first time around), Feet of Clay and Jingo (both better than the first time I read them), and, most notably, The Story Girl by Lucy Maud Montgomery. It's notable in that I've been intending to reread it for the longest time and also in that I never actually read the full book; I got out a version that was split into many smaller volumes for . . . some reason. But that's been delightful. I know everyone's all over Montgomery's Anne books, but I always liked The Story Girl better.
• And, to wrap things up, we have War Bound, the second Elven Alliance book, which I enjoyed well enough in the same way I enjoyed the first book, and The Library of the Dead, which was one of my Halloween-ish reads and was . . . meh. Not a bad book, but I didn't love it, and I don't think I'll continue the series. Not pictured is The Blacktongue Thief, which I technically haven't finished (I had to return it to the library) and have mixed feelings about. I like the POV character and the most prominent secondary character well enough, but . . . I don't enjoy spending time in the storyworld, and it's just a rather dark book. We'll see if I decide to get it back out.
• The other bit of reading news I have is that I acquired a signed copy of Vespertine (the OwlCrate edition), and it's so pretty. I'm super excited to read it, and I'll get to do that this weekend — Vespertine, Coraline, and Circles of Seven are my Halloween reads for the year, and I'm looking forward to all three.

Watching!

• Glory hallelujah, I have finally gotten through Episode 74 of Critical Role! For those who missed it, I've been stuck on this episode since August, partially because I haven't had time to watch and partially because I was just . . . not enthused about Reani, the guest character. She rubbed me the wrong way, y'know? But once I powered through the first half of the episode, I warmed up to her a bit. And now I can finally move on with the rest of the campaign . . . well, in between watching Campaign 3! I'm very excited to be able to follow a campaign from the start for the first time, and I'm liking the new party fairly well so far. And, yes, I am trying to watch the episodes live . . . or, I start the episodes live, at any rate. I have yet to watch an entire CR episode in one sitting, and I don't see that changing for Campaign 3.
• Aside from Critical Role, I watched three movies with my family: Die Hard, Master and Commander, and Casablanca. All three have been on my to-watch list for a bit, though for different reasons. Now that I've seen them, I can say of all three that I didn't love them, but I did like them, and I'd probably watch them again at some point. Die Hard had much, ah, rougher language than I expected, but I appreciated the twists and the scheming and counter-scheming on both sides. Master and Commander was interesting and had good character dynamics, though it was more serious than I expected from the few posts I'd seen about it. (I suppose that the name should've clued me in, but ah well.) And Casablanca is, well, it's a classic for a reason. But Rick and his arc and his interactions with the police prefect fall into some of my favorite tropes, so I did genuinely like the movie.

Life!

• Most of this month has been occupied by preparations for my church's Trunk or Treat event, which was this past Sunday, October 24. As you probably saw on Facebook or Instagram if you follow me over there, my theme was an International Curiosity Shop — otherwise known as one of those weird little shops that provide quest items to adventurers and sell artefacts from fantastic worlds to interested buyers and then disappear — otherwise known as a way to use the maximum number of props I already own and appeal to a variety of fandoms. I spent several weekends acquiring materials and crafting items, including fixing up my steampunk pistol to make it more interesting, painting dragon eggs, putting together a Death Star pumpkin to hold candy in, and repairing my sword. I did end up working right up to the wire, but it all came together pretty nicely!
• Of course, I might not have been running quite so close to the line had most of my Columbus Day weekend not been taken up by other activities, namely helping my family cut up an absolutely massive oak tree that fell on our neighbors' property. (They asked us to cut it up and take it away, for the record.) We didn't even finish it in the weekend; my parents had to finish the job over Tuesday and Wednesday while I went back to my actual job. It was not how I planned to spend the weekend, but . . . it's a necessary evil if we want wood for the fireplace.
• I will also admit that some delays came from the fact that I went to a local Renaissance Faire on the 17th — a decision I absolutely do not regret, even if not going would've given me extra crafting time. While it was much smaller than the Ohio Renaissance Festival that I've gone to before, it was a lot of fun. The highlight was probably watching a demonstration of Viking-era weaponry that gave me a lot of good story research (and made up for a rather disappointing joust immediately before), and I had a lovely time wandering around different stands afterward. Also, I got to taste mead for the first time, and I genuinely enjoyed it! I mean, I thought I would, but most of my previous experiences with tasting alcohol were rather disappointing. And now I have reference for my books as well!
• Anyway. Even with the tree and the Ren Faire, I did get everything finished in time for Trunk or Treat. The event itself was fun, though I did kind of wear out my throat from talking to people in a mostly-English accent for several hours. I mean, what's the point of dressing up and setting up a whole Interdimensional Curiosity Shop if you're not going to stay in character and wish people well on their quests when they come get candy? Oddly enough, the props that got the most comments from people were the ones that took the least effort, but such is life.
• What else is there? I had my first Connect Group meeting at the start of October, but it didn't go terribly well — of three people who expressed interest, only one showed up, and one responded to my "don't forget this is happening" email with "Oh, I forgot to tell you that stuff came up and I can't be part of this after all." The person who showed up was nice, and we had some good conversation while playing Carcasonne, but it was definitely not what I hoped it would be.
• Work's been busy, though certainly not as stressful as September's hacking adventure. I think I should probably just accept that nothing's going to be really calm until after the New Year, what with fundraising campaigns this month and a little bit of next month and the holidays coming up soon. On the upside, our new Kids Ministry director started this month, and she's lovely. And by "lovely" I mean that she's nice and friendly and sends me information ahead of the day it's due. This might seem like a low bar, but since the first deadline of the week is Monday noon and most of the programs staff (the people from whom I need said info) don't have a lot of spare time over the weekend . . . well, it's impressive, and it makes my job much more pleasant.
• The last item of note for the month is that, as I mentioned in September's Doings, I rejoined the photo club my dad and I used to attend. The first contest I was able to enter was last night, and while I didn't have as much time to take new photos as I hoped I would, I was pretty happy with my entries. And two of them actually placed in their categories, so that was a nice confidence boost for my first actual contest in a long time.

November Plans

• First and foremost, the recurring question of every November: Am I doing NaNoWriMo? While I originally planned to skip it this year because I'm working and I won't be able to block out the same swathes of time to write, Bastian Dennel #3 got pushed back far enough that I might as well call it a NaNoNovel and myself a NaNoRebel (since I don't anticipate the novel hitting 50K — it'll be closer to the length of The Midnight Show than Gilded in Ice). I do want to get the first draft hammered out pretty quickly — in time to potentially write something else in December — and I'm hoping that the general culture and atmosphere of NaNoWriMo will help with that.
• That does mean I'm extending my blogging semi-hiatus into next month, which is to say that I'll post as I have time, inclination, or prior commitment. I have one review-type Friday 5s planned for Curse of the Midnight King (since I'm technically on the street team). And if anyone's interested, I'm thinking of writing a post about how I made some of my Trunk or Treat props. But in general, the novel takes precendence over the blog.
• On the D&D front, the group I run will start back in on our main campaign next weekend, and I'm excited about that. Like I said, I've been planning some of the next adventure for quite some time, plus one of my players and I were working out more about a character's backstory and it turns out that it'll tie in rather nicely with part of what's going to happen.
• Much like last month, I want to try to do more photography so I'll have more recent photos to work with for club contests. Given the first item in my list of plans, we'll see how that works out.
• And on top of all that, I'll have my next Connect Group meeting this coming week, and I'm looking at volunteering in some other areas of the church (namely the AV Team) as well. We'll see how both of those go. Hopefully better than the first Connect Group meeting did . . .

How was your October? Any exciting plans for November? Are you participating in NaNoWriMo? If so, what are you writing? Would you be interested in hearing about how I made any of my Trunk or Treat props? Please tell me in the comments!
Thanks for reading!

August 2019 Doings!

I'm back from my hiatus at last! It probably wasn't the greatest marketing choice to disappear for so long right after my release . . . but I did need the break. August was another weird mix of really chill and "I'm DYING," and yeah. It was interesting.

Writing!

• Mechanical Heart is officially out, and the release went really well overall! Y'all seem to like it, which makes me happy. (That said: if you've read it, please leave a review, especially on Amazon. Currently there's just four reviews over there . . . though they're all good reviews, so that's great.)
• (Also, Kyle Robert storming Shultz read my book and liked it and I still can't quite believe that's a thing that happened. I screamed a little when I found out, not gonna lie.)
• August was not a great writing month, let me just say.
• I don't actually know how much I wrote, but I do know that it wasn't enough.
• I did have an excuse, though. It's called "Work, packing, school, and more work." Also, certain scenes ended up dragging ooooonnnnn and oooonnnn and it got to the point where I was like "I don't want to write this; I will do literally anything that's not writing this." I will have to find a way to make them more interesting in edits. (Or I may find out that they aren't actually that long and they just feel long because I didn't want to write them . . . not sure.)
• Oh, and I did some creative non-fiction pieces for my cnf class, and I think some of them turned out pretty well. I may post them on the blog eventually, but we'll see.
• On the upside, some of my characters got nominated in the Silmaril Awards! Breen and Baili are both up for Most Epic Heroine, and Luis and Grace are contenders for Most Faithful Friend. I don't really expect them to win, but I'm really happy that people like them enough to nominate them! (And there are still a few more days to second nominations, so . . .)

Reading!

• August wasn't a half-bad reading month, though it wasn't as great as the start of the summer.
• The Game was probably my favorite read of the month, as should not be surprising since it's by Diana Wynne Jones. It was really short and wrapped up a bit quickly, but it was a very clever take on mythology and just a good story all 'round. Oath of the Outcast was another great book; though I found the lack of female characters a bit disconcerting, I liked the characters and plot and focus on family and friendship. And Descendent of the Crane was great right up until it tore my heart into tiny pieces and then told me that it was actually the first in a series, so that's a thing. I do recommend it — it's a great fantasy-mystery with a bonus helping of "suddenly ascended ruler trying to figure out how to do the rulership thing" and a topping of family drama and relationships. The ending just hurts. A lot.
• I also enjoyed Savannah Jezowski's short stories, "The Witching Hour" and "The Hounds of Darkness." They're both solid short stories, and I appreciate how effectively Savannah can write from a cat's perspective. I'm not sure how I feel about the ending of Hounds, but that's a me thing.
• One tier down: three books that were good, but not as great as I hoped. Not Write Now was an interesting book of writing advice from Kyle Robert Shultz, and I feel like it's worth a read if you want to readily identify the ways you can accidentally (or purposefully) set yourself up to fail as a writer. Storms, it's probably worth getting just for the prologue/introduction. That said, it wasn't as effective for me personally as it might be for other people. Match Cats was a cute anthology of romance shorts from the perspective of both cats and owners . . . which is fine, but fluffier than I wanted. And The Atlas of Cursed Places was slightly less helpful for location inspiration than I thought it would be, but it was still a pretty interesting read that nicely balanced history, philosophical musing, science, and imagination.
• Last, we have my first DNF in a while: Peasprout Chen: Future Legend of Skate and Sword. I picked this up on a whim, thinking "Oh, hey, this looks like fun!" Spoiler alert: it was not fun. I gave up about three or four chapters in. I couldn't stand Peasprout — she's too arrogant, and too dismissive of her younger brother, and just too frustrating all around.
• I did acquire some lovely books, mostly via giveaway! From Emma of Awkwordly Emma, I won Empress of All Seasons, Sorcery of Thorns, and Truly Devious, all of which I'm super-excited to read but haven't quite gotten to yet (mostly because library books took precedence). From C.M. Banschbach, I won Oath of the Outcast . . . twice. Thanks to a mix-up somewhere along the line, I accidentally received two copies. (Not that I'm complaining! Now I have a copy to give to someone . . . as soon as I figure out who.)
• Oh, and I read roughly sixteen volumes of Schlock Mercenary, thanks to the recommendation of Matthew Sampson. I'm not sure whether or not to thank him. On one hand, the storyline is great. You have to get past some off-color humor, particularly in the first few books, but the craft, characterization, and worldbuilding are spot-on. I just found out that the author does the Writing Excuses podcast along with Brandon storming Sanderson, and I am exactly zero percent surprised.

Watching!

• In keeping with last month's theme, my family and I finished our John-Wayne-watching with True Grit, which was actually really good and I would've watched ages ago if someone had properly explained how great it was, focusing on the things that I'd actually get excited about. (Which is to say: strong-minded female protagonist who knows what she wants and won't let anyone stop her from going after it, and a wonderful example of the "grizzled, cynical loner accidentally adopts small naive newbie-adventurer." Also, lots of snark and no stupid pointless romance.) Maddie did act like a bit of a brat at times, but it wasn't too bad. And while the ending was a bit odd, the movie on the whole was solid.
• We also watched The Sting, which was a heist movie set in 1920s Chicago-ish area. And it was fine, just very slow. I think I would have loved it if it were a book; as a movie, my natural impatience and my inability to tell similar faces apart made it a bit difficult. Still, great character development!
• On the TV-watching front: my roommate and I agreed that we needed to continue our Fairy Tail hiatus and that we weren't ready to start up SAO again . . . so we started watching The Librarians, which is pretty much about people who work for a magical library, trying to keep magic from being used for evil. It occasionally trips over cliches, but it's overall pretty fun. But we took a break from that too about four episodes in. Why? Because . . .

• We're watching Avatar: The Last Airbender! I've had this on my to-watch list longer than basically any other show, and I can say with confidence that it is worth the wait. We're about halfway through season one and I'm really enjoying the story and characters and the really good balance between humor and adventure and drama. And while certain characters are a bit annoying right now, there's no one who's unbearably frustrating, and it's sort of a more realistic annoying-ness rather than the stupid-annoying-ness of several characters in other shows I could name. Plus, I think that the show's doing a really good job of setting up stuff that's going to occur in the future, particularly with regard to character development.

Life!

• Ok, so obviously the main event this month was that I returned to Cedarville University for the start of my senior year. And that's been going fairly well so far. I'm pretty sure that this year is either going to be stupidly stressful or really chill. I have three different classes that seem like they'll be heavily creative: two graphic design and the creative nonfiction class I mentioned earlier. I'm excited for all of those, but they're also the ones that'll be hardest to keep up with because I want to get stuff right. In addition, I have Honors Colloqium (which has only met once because it's on Mondays and we get Labor Day off), Statistics for Business (which seems like it'll be pretty fun, if only because the professor is doing a great job of keeping class time intersting — though I also genuinely like statistics, particularly probability), and Professional Portfolio Development (which is basically "this is how you get a job, now go do it"). All in all, it's a solid lineup.
• My roommate and I did not make it to the Rennaissance Festival on Labor Day weekend like we usually do, but I did walk down into to town several times to hang out in the coffee shops and drink yummy things (and probably spend more money than I should, but OH WELL. I'm supporting small businesses). And I went to the pancake breakfast on Monday, which was delicious.
• (For those who aren't aware: Labor Day was basically invented by a person from Cedarville, so it's a Big Deal here. There's a parade and a three-day festival and everything. Plus the college students get the day off, which is great.)
• Plus, I'm the secretary for TDK again, so I'm keeping busy with that. We have our first QuizBowl day today, and our Kickoff Party is in a couple days, and I'm really excited for both things.
• And I played both Portal and Portal 2! Both were great, and I'm really sad that they're over. (Also, I'm sad that I can't go back and replay specific levels to try to get some of the achievements I missed . . . oh well. Maybe I'll replay the whole thing in a year or two.) Very good storytelling, especially in Portal 2, but also great puzzle challenges.
• Before Cedarville, not a ton happened . . . though I did finish my sword!

• I painted it, attached the hilt and blade, and put the wrap on the hilt literally two nights before we left for Cedarville. Things I have learned: (1) next time, print in the other direction, (2) spray paint, then craft paint, never just one, and (3) epoxy is interesting, but not as intimidating as it might seem.
• I also finally got my bread to the desired fluffiness, though never to the desired shape. My mom's still keeping it going, so maybe she'll have better luck eventually.
• Other than that . . . um . . . I have sometimes-glasses now. I noticed that the chapel slides were getting steadily harder to see, so we got my eyes checked and I'm basically on the border of needing glasses and not needing them. So I ended up getting them, but I mostly wear them during class and when I'm driving — I get headaches if I wear them too long, especially if I'm looking at screens. But, yeah. That's a thing. I put them on and I was like "Oh, huh, I didn't realize stuff was supposed to be sharp that far out!"

September Plans!

• I'm still hoping to make it to the Rennaissance Festival, hopefully this weekend. We'll see how that goes.
• Other than that: lots of schoolwork and org activities! I'm in two high-committment orgs (TDK and the Inklings) and then I'm in several other orgs where my committment is either "I'll come if I have time" or else "I'll be there at every meeting, but you only meet once a month, so we're chill." I am probably in too many things, but it's easier to test stuff out now and drop it later than to try to break into a new social group halfway through the school year.
• And, of course, there's D&D! The campaign I'm currently in is a bit . . . intersting . . . with regard to scheduling; half our members are off-campus, and we're meeting online still, and it's a bit of a mess. But it's still fun when we're able to meet. And then the campaign that I'm running should kick off pretty soon, maybe either next week or the week after if we can get stuff sorted out there.
• On the writing front, I really want to finish my WIP draft this month so I can take a little time off before I start the first round of edits (either in October or November, depending on how I'm feeling). And I have several creative nonfiction ideas that I want to get down at some point (and need to get down so i can turn them in, but yeah).
• As far as reading goes: I have very easy library access, and I have a shelf full of mostly not-yet-reads, all of which I'm excited about. As long as I have time (and as soon as I finish Northanger Abbey), reading this month will be great.

How was your August? What are your plans for September? Have you been doing any fun crafty things? Please tell me in the comments!
Thanks for reading!
-Sarah (Leilani Sunblade)