September 2023 Doings!

Well, September is over — nearly a week over at this point, but of course my usual Doings! day was also the day of the Wisest Counselor Awards Ceremony, so we had to delay things a little. It's certainly been a very busy month, between book releases, Silmaril Awards, work, and general life stuff. So, we should have plenty to cover in this post . . .

But first, a quick announcement! If you're in the Northern Virginia area, you should come out to Eat Local Read Local on October 14 at Cascades Library! From 11am to 2pm, seventy local authors — myself included! — will be selling and signing books. There will also be food trucks, live music, and some kids' activities. So, if you want to pick up a paperback of your favorite of my books, or if you want my signature on something you own, please stop by! You can find out more by clicking here.

And now, on with the Doings!

Writing!

• Obviously, the main writing event of the month was the release of Song of the Selkies! The weeks leading up to this were hectic as I rushed to finish edits before release day. When I say that I was re-uploading files until the very last minute, I'm not joking! But the release itself was amazing, and I am super grateful to my beta readers (for all their input) and my ARC readers (who all had lovely things to say about the book and who also helped catch a few typos that I otherwise would have missed). If you haven't picked up your copy yet, make sure you do that; it's currently available in both ebook and paperback on Amazon.
• On the topic of Song of the Selkies, did you catch the character art I shared on Facebook and Instagram leading up to the release? I've shared it above for anyone who missed it — isn't it so good? I commissioned it from the lovely UrbanHart, who did an amazing job bringing the characters to life. If you're looking for a character artist, I highly recommend her!
• Outside of Song of the Selkies, September was also Silmaril Awards month! I hosted the Wisest Counselor award this year, which was fun. It was a nice change of pace from the Friends last year. If you haven't yet, make sure you check out this year's awards ceremonies (not just mine) — I honestly think some of them are the best we've had yet!
• In addition to all this, I did a little bit of work on Bastian Dennel, PI #4 — by which I mean that I finished Chapter 28 in September and wrote most of Chapter 29 this past week. It's been slow going as I try to adjust from Ceana's voice to Bastian's, Kona's, and Dayo's — and from medieval language to 1920s slang! I'm getting back into the swing of it, though, and hopefully I'll be done soon anyway.
• I did not do any D&D writing this month, but my D&D group did meet a couple times, and we're having fun. We spent a whole session dealing with some weird dreams and discovering that one character has fey heritage that even she didn't know about. That was honestly delightful.

Reading!

• This was an excellent month on the reading front — I read so many good books, I hardly know where to start!
• A good chunk of what I read were ARCs. I've already reviewed Second Chance Superhero, When on Land, and My Fair Mermaid, so I won't repeat myself on any of those. 
• My favorite two ARCs were Black and Deep Desires and Wormwood Abbey, both of which are absolutely delicious gothic tales. I talked about Black and Deep Desires a little in my Fall 2023 Reads post; as I said then, even if I don't usually go in for vampire stories, I am delighted that I made an exception for this one. It's full of eeriness and mystery meshed with found family and an excellent romance, and I just love it so much. Then we have Wormwood Abbey, which is a much lighter cozy gothic — with dragons! And a mystery writer heroine! And a solid family that genuinely loves and cares for one another at its core! I need the rest of the series immediately, please and thank you very much.
• Continuing down the ARC train, Steal the Morrow was another good one. I loved Jenelle's take on Oliver Twist — it's far shorter and less depressing than the original, and her Olifur is an lovable blend of principled, clever, and determined. And Twisted Grimms, an anthology of fairy tale retellings that I read on and off between other books, was generally good. There were a couple stories in it that I didn't much care for, but there were also some excellent takes on very obscure fairy tales that I really enjoyed.
• Outside of ARCs, the highlight of my reading month was Dark & Stormy, the much-anticipated third book in Suzannah Rowntree's Miss Dark's Apparitions series. This one was just as good — perhaps even better — than I expected, and it had me internally screaming (in the best way) at multiple points. Our crew — Vasily in particular — definitely go through the wringer here, but there are also some absolutely lovely moments.
• I'll just give a quick run-through of my other reads. Spellbreaker and Spellmaker were roughly what I expected from Holmberg novels, which is to say that they were quick, enjoyable reads with a clever magic system and some nice romance, but I'm not sure if they have the depth to hold up on the reread. Ruth and the Ghost was a short horror story by W.R. Gingell; it's weird, but I liked it well enough. Salt Fat Acid Heat, I actually mostly read back in August. I don't think I would ever make any of the recipes in it, but it did help me understand some cooking principles a lot better than I did before reading it. A Wrinkle in Time was a reread inspired by the presence of the Mrs. W's in the Silmaril Awards, so that was enjoyable. And I read another installment of Fullmetal Alchemist on October 3, as that's a significant day in the fandom — plus, I still had a book hangover from Dark & Stormy, and I figured the best way to get over it would be to read something where my expectations are almost completely different, so I wouldn't have to worry about the comparison game.
• Oh! Almost forgot — while it's not pictured above, I did read 75% of Gillian Bronte Adams's Of Fire and Ash, trying my best to participate in the readalong Gillian was holding. In general, I enjoyed it, and I see why it won a Realm Award. I don't think it's going to be a new favorite, but that could just be because I was too stressed to properly enjoy it for parts of my reading time.

Life!

• The month started off wonderfully with a Bible Study retreat at White Sulphur Springs, otherwise known as one of my favorite places on earth. This was a joint retreat between our study here in Virginia and another study in Ohio (the one where many of the original members of our group met, in fact!), so there was a good crowd, and we had the chance to visit with some long-time friends. Plus, my sister attends the Ohio study, and she came down, so I got to see and hang out with her! And that was really nice. While we were there, we went down to the old hotel, which the WSS staff recently renovated, and toured it to see what had changed and what was still the same. We also had square dancing one of the nights, and I actually had a partner so I could participate, and that was a delight! I love square dancing, but usually no one asks me, and I'm too introverted to ask someone myself. This year, one of the other participants was very actively making sure everyone who wanted to dance had someone to dance with, and I just really appreciated that.
• Once we got back, it was back into the regular routine of work-edit-classwork-blog-and-sleep. Most of my work projects have gone well, aside from one or two hiccups, so that's good. I honestly expected to be a lot more stressed at work than I actually was. Apparently I accidentally front-loaded most of my stress into August, I guess? The one area where we did have some issues was with the livestream — for some reason, our internet decided to buffer badly enough to prevent the stream three weeks in a row. We're still not entirely sure why it suddenly became a problem, but after much investigating, testing, and calling tech help on our part . . . it seemed to mostly resolve itself? Or something? I don't know. We're trying to figure out how to lower the demand on our bandwidth on Sunday mornings so we can make these issues less likely in the future.
• My grad school class also eased up pretty quickly, though the weeks leading up to Song of the Selkies's release were a bit rough. There were multiple weeks when I was submitting all my classwork in the last days of the week when it was due, having also done most of that work within a day or two of the due dates, but most of the assignments were small enough that having to do that wasn't a huge issue. This past week's assignment was a different story; it's been . . . problematic. I probably should've been working on it during the time I was writing this post . . . but said project has been driving me nuts and I don't want to think about it more than I have to. It's one of those things that should have been boring-but-straightforward, but then research turned out to be an absolute nightmare. Still, next week is the end of the class, and it should actually be easier.
• I did get to make bagels one weekend, though! Sourdough bagels, to be specific. They were delicious.

October Plans

• Obviously, October is already a quarter over at this point, but I shall list my plans anyway.
• I have a couple events this month that I'm really looking forward to! One, of course, is Eat Local Read Local on October 14, which I mentioned at the start of this post. This is my first real author event aside from the book fair at Realm Makers, and I'm a little nervous, but I'm also hopeful that it'll be a good time. In addition, a friend and I are planning to meet up at a local Renaissance Festival, and I am so looking forward to that! It's the same Renn Faire we went to last year, and it was a ton of fun then, and I think it'll be great this year as well. I do still need to figure out what I'm going to wear for that, but I'm sure I'll get it sorted out.
• My writing goal for the month is to finish BDPI #4 and write at least one short story for a writing challenge I'm participating in. This is the same writing challenge I did last October. I somehow ended up in the same category as I did last year, and I have no idea what I'm going to write, but . . . I'll figure something out.
• I'm also finishing up one class and starting another for my master's program. I will get a week's break in between, which will be nice. The next class is going to be on grant writing, though, unless I misremember, and I'm not sure how I'm going to feel about that. I don't like asking people for money, and that's basically what grant writing is, as far as I can tell.
• On the reading front, I've worked my way through most of my ARCs, so I'll be trying to clear up some of my library stacks and checking to see how I'm doing on my reading goals for the year. Some (like all the book recs I solicited) are probably a lost cause at this point, but others (like classic or non-fantasy reads) I might still have a shot at.
• Work will continue to be busy, though October is probably the calmest of the fall months — our big things are Stewardship and a service event, and I did most of the design work for both of those in August or September. Still, there's always something that needs doing.
• I'm sure there's something I'm forgetting that I should talk about here, but if I can't remember it . . . eh. Probably wasn't that important.

How was your September? What are you looking forward to in October? Was September a good reading month for you? And will I see you at Eat Local Read Local? Please tell me in the comments!
Thanks for reading!