March 2024 Doings!

Hello, everyone! It's Good Friday, and March is almost over, and that means it's time for Doings! March has been better than I expected in some respects and worse in others, but on the whole, it's been a decent month filled with some very good stories. I'm excited to tell you about it, so let's get going!

Writing!

• In some respects, on paper, March looks like another not-great writing month. I didn't finish drafting my DOSA Files story (I barely started it), I didn't finish my next D&D adventure or the travel interlude I added at the last minute, I didn't get a full 40K words on Daughters of Atirse #2, and I definitely didn't finish Atirse #2.
• That said, I feel like March was still an improvement over February. I may not have hit 40K on Daughters of Atirse, but I got close — 33K, probably rising to 36K over the weekend, which is nothing to sneeze at, especially as I was working through a troublesome section of the plot. I'm also pretty happy with the quality of most of what I wrote, and I think it's reasonable to expect that I can finish the draft next month. I also commissioned character art of two of the main characters, and I cannot wait for when I get to share it. It's so pretty, I can't even. It's by the lovely Scarvenartist, who's also done art for Gillian Bronte Adams, and I cannot recommend her highly enough.
• Additionally, even if I didn't finish either D&D project, I made progress on both, and the travel interlude is pretty close to finished. And I'm back to having time to get the original adventure sorted out, as the party chose to travel via the route most likely to involve Problems. I will note that they were warned that they were going the dangerous route; they just decided to do it anyway.
• I am a little upset with myself for not working more on the DOSA Files story, but it's ok. I needed to prioritize other things, and that's how it is sometimes.
• Overall, though, I'm happy with how my writing went this month. I'm also pleased that I didn't really have to resort to the plan I mentioned in my February 2024 Doings, taking extra time to rest before I start writing. Between the warmer weather and the fact that work was less stressful than I expected, I generally wasn't as tired in the evenings — and I had another factor giving me some extra motivation to focus, but I'll talk about that in a later section.
• Also, on a more definitely-successful note, I did have an author event this month that I think went well! On March 2, I joined Heather Halverstadt and Realm Writers Mid-Atlantic at a nearby craft fair, with all my books in tow. While the event was tiring (even though I didn't stay the whole time), I got to have some really good conversations there, and I sold some books, so that's also lovely. (Side note: if you found me at that craft fair and you're reading this now, hello! Welcome! So glad to have you! Please say hi in the comments!) Plus, my family went out to a new location of our favorite Mexican restaurant afterward — that's not really writing-related, but it was in the same event, so it totally counts for this section.
• Oh, and I found out that Song of the Selkies and "Grim Guardian" both made the Realm Awards long list, so that's exciting! We're still waiting to find out if either will make the finalists as well . . .

Reading!

• The books I read at the start of this month feel so far away in relation to now. It's weird. Anyway —
• Let's start with the new-to-me reads, which include one just-for-fun read, one class read, and three ARCs (one of which isn't pictured). Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries popped up on everyone's 2023 best-of lists, so I knew I had to get my hands on it, and having read it, I agree with everyone's assessment. This was an excellent book; I did have a little trouble getting into it, but once Bambleby showed up, I was properly hooked. We have fae, academia, adventures, Howl-and-Sophie vibes . . . it's great. If you enjoy Suzannah Rowntree's Miss Sharp and Miss Dark books, this will probably be right up your alley.
• As for the ARCS: I already reviewed Water Horse, so I recommend you go read my thoughts instead of me repeating myself. Nobody's Hero was a fun, fast-paced superhero adventure in the same vein as H.L. Burke's Supervillain Rehabilitation Project series; I'm not obsessing over it, but I liked the characters, the world, and the storyline, and I'll probably read the next book. Finally, not pictured is Dark & Dawn, book 4 of the Miss Dark's Apparitions series, which I'm currently reading but will almost certainly finish over the weekend. As of writing, I'm about halfway through and thoroughly enjoying it — the character dynamics are impeccable as ever, and I am extremely eager to see where this job goes for Molly and the rest of the group.
• The class-required-read was How I Know God Answers Prayer, a memoir by 19th-century missionary Rosalind Goforth in which she recounts various occasions in which God answered or didn't answer her prayers in notable ways. I didn't love it, but I liked it more than I expected to, and it's arguably been the best thing I got out of the class so far, so . . . there's that.
• We also have two miscellaneous rereads. Towards the end of February, Prydain Chronicles-related stuff kept popping up in my internet circles, and I got an itch to reread the series. I only managed The Book of Three before other books (that either had closer due dates or review-required dates) took precedence, but revisiting that one was fun, and I plan to finish the series in April. And DragonFire, which I read for the book club/readalong some of my friends and I have been doing, was naturally enjoyable. It's not my favorite in the series, but I do appreciate it more every time I read it.
• Finally, we have several email-subscription books. I finished Fellowship of the Ring towards the beginning of the month, as I was running behind reading the daily entries. The subscription went down after that, so I will not be continuing the reread at this time. I already have enough other email subscription stories to read! For example: A Study in Scarlet, courtesy of the Letters from Watson Substack, which I started in January and finished midway through this month. I didn't much like A Study in Scarlet when I first read it, as I preferred the short stories, but I enjoyed it more this time around. And I finally finished reading Dante's Divine Comedy, which started on Good Friday of 2023. I confess that I've been skimming the cantos more than actually reading them for a while now, but . . . at least I can say I've read it!
• On the topic of email-subscription books, I've been very much enjoying the Letters Regarding Jeeves Substack, though I'm not very good at keeping on top of it. I've never read the Jeeves and Wooster stories before, and this seems to be an excellent way to do it. The small doses mean I can appreciate the humor without getting caught up in secondhand embarrassment, and the stories themselves are pretty clever.

 Watching & Playing!

• This section is heavy on the "playing" and light on the "watching" this month, so I'm glad I expanded it! Somewhat unsurprisingly, I've watched pretty much nothing this month — no movies, no streaming shows, and (somewhat more surprisingly), hardly any YouTube.
• I have, however, enjoyed a lot of podcasts! (Or, a lot for me, anyway.) I finished the second season of Wolf 359 (very good! much exciting stuff going on!) and then took a couple weeks' breather because dear goodness the last several episodes were intense. Also, I needed to catch up on Dear Hank & John before I got ridiculously behind, and I wanted to work through more of my test episodes from the long list of recommendations I solicited back in January.
• That list, for the record, is still very long, but I'm slowly getting through it and getting a better feel for what kinds of podcasts I actually like and what I don't vibe with. And I do have everything on that list actually written down in a note instead of just held in my Google Podcasts queue, so I won't lose it all when I inevitably have to switch apps!
• On a that note, Google is apparently discontinuing their podcast app and forcing a switch to listening to podcasts via YouTube Music . . . but I don't like the YouTube Music podcast interface, so I'm looking for a new app. If anyone has recommendations of what they use, please share!
• I've also been doing a lot of gaming this month, specifically playing Honkai Star Rail, a space-fantasy action RPG recommended to me by a friend. I'm not very far in — only partway through the second main quest — but I'm really enjoying it! The storyline is fun, the artwork is gorgeous, and there are a lot of cool characters to meet and get to know. I did have trouble figuring out some of the mechanics at first (especially because this is my first time playing this kind of game), but I was able to pick up the essentials without too much trouble, and the friend who recommended it helped me figure out some of the other stuff I was confused about.
• Also, weirdly enough, I think the fact that I'm gaming more has helped my writing productivity? I don't play unless I'm satisfied that I have everything else done that I need to do that day, and having something that I'm looking forward to doing after I write gives me extra motivation to not get distracted. And that extra motivation and focus mean that my writing flows better, which in turn means that I'm more likely to pass my wordcount goal because I'm really into what I'm writing or because, when I reach my goal for the day, I'm a hundred-odd words away from some very satisfying manuscript wordcount and I might as well just push a little further and get there. I don't know how long this will continue to work, but as long as it does, I'm happy!

Life!

 

• March was a bit less stressful than I expected in some ways and a bit more stressful than expected on others.
• Work was actually a lot more chill than I thought it would be. Usually, Lent and Easter make up one of our busiest seasons, and I expected the fact that this year would be worse than usual because there was so little time between the end of Christmas and the start of Lent. However, one of the projects I thought would take up a lot of time (new devotionals for Stations of the Cross) instead got cancelled, so all I had to do was update the devotionals we had. That still took time, but not nearly as much. I also managed to work ahead on a lot of the graphics, which lowered the overall pressure even further. And while I did spend most of this past week racing to front-load as many tasks as possible, just in case I ended up sick by Wednesday, I remained healthy aside from allergies (praise God!) and ended up with a really light Thursday as a result. So, I'm definitely thanking God for all of that.
• Grad school, on the other hand, was much less chill. My technical writing class ended well; though the final assignment took more time to put together than I thought it would, the end result turned out really well. The new editing and publishing class, on the other hand, has been . . . frustrating. I don't agree with the professors' positions on certain types of writing (because I feel like they're promoting a particularly unhelpful misconception), and the first big assignment of the class (due this weekend) has been . . . problematic. I wanted to work ahead on it so that I would have it ready to turn in this past Tuesday or Wednesday and I wouldn't have to worry about it on Easter weekend, but instead I had three false starts before I figured out how to write it in a way that didn't make me kind of hate everything. Part of the problem is that the assignment is essentially a personal essay about my faith development, which sounds like it should be easy . . . but I don't actually like writing about myself that much outside of blogging. I almost always feel like I'm being overdramatic, and the angle I initially tried to use for the assignment was particularly vulnerable to that concern. Thankfully, I think I've figured out how to get around the problem, which is to write the thing mostly about books and fantasy media and bring myself in slant-wise. Basically, though, the whole class just seems calculated to hit on all my greatest frustrations while taunting me with how much I'd like to just be able to say "I have published seven books, and I did all the editing, layout, and such myself; also this is literally 70% of my day job; do I really need to be here?"
• Still, it's better than grant writing!
• I want a more cheerful subject, so let's talk about food. My Baking Yesteryear recipe for March was Cowboy Cookies, basically oatmeal cookies with coconut, pecans, and chocolate chips mixed in. They were very tasty, and I definitely think I'll make them again, though next time I might toast the coconut longer and substitute butterscotch chips for half of the chocolate. And March 14 is, of course, Pi Day, and I celebrated with pie or pie-adjacent foods at every meal: quiche at breakfast, store-bought apple pie at lunch, and homemade spaghetti pie and pecan pie at dinner. It was, as you can probably tell, a very good day.
• D&D has also been going well. In my long-running group, we fought an ancient dracolich in our most recent session, which was really cool but also terrifying because, you know, ancient undead black dragon. And half our party can't even hit it properly because we're primarily melee fighters and the dragon has both wings and an annoying habit of hanging out in the shadows, out of reach of our lights. We did beat it, though, after a magnificent Touch of Death from our cleric and a fourth-level Divine Smite from me (the one hit of mine that I remember actually landing during the entire fight). We're getting steadily closer and closer to the end of the campaign, and it's exciting, though also really weird to think about — we've been playing this for five or six years now. We do have plans for another campaign after this, though, so our group hopefully isn't going to break up anytime soon.
• The 4e campaign I just joined had its second session this month, which was mostly taken up by combat. Adapting to 4e's style of combat was a little bit of a challenge for me, but thankfully, one thing carries over from 5e: the rogue's best tactic is to hide, shoot, and hide again! And rogues are shaping up to be just as fun to play as I thought they would be.
• On the topic of D&D, I had my first actual run-in with someone who genuinely believed D&D is a gateway to the occult, so that was interesting (and kind of feels like an . . . achievement? milestone?). The person in question is a newcomer to our Bible study who overheard me mention to someone else that I play D&D on the weekends and stepped in to voice her concerns. I'd been internally preparing for a version of that conversation for a bit (because I knew she had a similar objection to Harry Potter), but I was still pretty nervous — I really did not want the center of dissent in the Bible study, even if I was pretty confident that most people would back me up if things got ugly.  Thankfully, the person making the comments was speaking from a place of genuine concern, not judgement, and it turned out that she doesn't really know a lot about D&D, so once I explained to her what D&D and fantasy in general were for me and my faith, we were able to reach an amicable conclusion. And the conversation did later inspire my idea for what to do about my current grad school assignment, so I guess I have to thank her for that, ha!
• We'll wrap up with Easter, though it hasn't quite happened yet as of writing. We won't be celebrating with our Bible study like we normally do, due to people being out of town, but we still have plans I'm looking forward to, namely attending our church's Saturday service and inviting a few friends over for Easter lunch. I'm making a coconut cake; it's going to be great.

April Plans

• As I said already, I think I can reasonably finish Daughters of Atirse #2 (which is so close to having an actual title, by the way) by the end of April, so I'm aiming to do just that — or, at least, to get within a few chapters of finishing. As such, I'm putting my loose wordcount goal at 40,000 words again, and we'll see if that works out. April is going to be another Realm-Makers-equivalent-to-NaNoWriMo month, so that should help give me the boost I need! There's nothing like a daily check-in and word sprinting buddies to help keep you on track.
• I also need to properly draft, edit, and submit my DOSA Files story, which I haven't given up on yet. While there's not much on paper at the moment, I've been letting it mature in the back of my mind, and I think I worked out one of my last major plot problems. And it's only 10,000 words, max, so writing it shouldn't take that long.
• I'm hoping that the current grad school class will become less frustrating as time goes on. I'm hoping that this past week is about as bad as it's going to get. If it is, the rest of the class will be annoying, but bearable. If it goes downhill from here . . . well, we'll see what happens. Work, at least, should be chill — the period right after something like Easter or Christmas almost always is.
• On the reading front, I have a couple more ARCs that I'm looking forward to, and I also hope to get back to my Prydain reread. And if I have a free weekend sometime, I have high hopes of going through my bookshelves to reorganize, weed out the books I know I'm not going to read or reread, and make space for new stories. (This is something I've been planning to do for a while now . . . but it's spring now, so hopefully that will make a difference.)
• Outside of all those things, I'm looking forward to more gaming, more D&D, and continuing to work on assorted small craft projects until I can psych myself up for another big thing.

How was your March? Any plans for April? How do you listen to podcasts? What are your Easter plans (or how did you celebrate, if you're reading this the week after Easter)? Please tell me in the comments!
Thanks for reading!

 

Spring 2024 Read

Hello, everyone! Spring is here . . . and so, naturally, the cold has returned after a week and a bit of sunshine, because that's how the world works apparently. Happily, this spring is also full of so many exciting releases, which provide a very handy distraction from the weather. In fact, there's enough releases that have me really hyped that I can't actually cut down my list to just five — so I'm posting the full version on both Light and Shadows and Dreams and Dragons! (I actually have an ulterior motive for doing this as well, but I'll get into that in a week or two.) What has me so excited? Let's find out. 

Spring 2024 Reads

1. The Queen's Curse by J.F. Rogers (February 27). Ok, yes, this released in February, which is not spring by any means, and it's the third in a trilogy that I haven't actually started. However, the trilogy does sound pretty cool — it's an epic portal fantasy (a genre that used to majorly dominate my reading), but with the hero coming from one fantasy world into another, which I've always thought is an underused concept. Better still, apparently at least one of these worlds is steampunk with elves and fae. If that isn't worth a try, I don't know what is.

2.  What Monstrous Gods by Rosamund Hodge (March 5). Past experience with Rosamund Hodge's work gives a roughly 50/50 chance on whether I like it . . . but that past experience also suggests that if I end up liking it, I'll really like it. And What Monstrous Gods sounds like it potentially has a lot in common with Cruel Beauty (which I liked enough to buy), so I am hopeful that this will will end up in that "really like it" category. It's a Sleeping Beauty retelling with what sounds like secrets and quests and an unexpectedly arranged marriage romance, and a lot of people with excellent taste in books have recommended it. I haven't gotten my hands on it yet, but I will request it from the library as soon as it becomes available in one of the systems.

3. Water Horse by Katie Hanna (March 19). I already read and reviewed this one! So, go read that post if you want my full thoughts. But in short: I think the fantasy and Western genres are an underrated combination, and I'm pleased that at least one author has also realized that and started to fill that void with this book. Water Horse blends Western adventure and drama with Irish mythology, and aside from having more swearing than I expected and a few quibbles with the writing style, I quite enjoyed it.

4. Nobody's Hero by Janeen Ippolito (March 21). This one actually released just yesterday, but I got an ARC, so I got to read it early. You can check out my Goodreads review for my full thoughts, but in short, this is a fun, fast-paced superhero adventure that has a lot in common with H.L. Burke's SVR-verse books. I enjoyed the characters and the storyline, and I also thought Ippolito had an interesting take on what a world populated in part by people with superpowers might look like, especially in the early stages when supers are a relatively new phenomenon.

5. No Man Left Behind by W.R. Gingell (March 23). And here we get to the part of the season when I possibly start exploding from an overload of awesomeness — otherwise known as what happens when four (four!) of my favorite authors release new books in rapid succession. First up: No Man Left Behind, the final book in the Worlds Behind series. I have very steadily enjoyed each book in this series more than the last, so I have very high hopes for how this tale will turn out, especially after all the revelations and general awesomeness of Book 4's ending. And the snippets Gingell has been releasing only reassure me that this book is going to be so, so good.

6. Dark & Dawn by Suzannah Rowntree (April 5). I have an ARC of this book waiting on my Kindle right now, and the only reason I haven't already devoured it is that I had a book club (or group read, whatever you want to call it) read I had to get through first. But I desperately, desperately, need to find out what happens next to Molly, Vasily, and the rest of the crew . . . particularly because there's a part of me that hasn't stopped screaming since I finished Dark & Stormy. Plus, this one is apparently going to delve into some mysteries of Molly's own past, and given that I have been wondering if foul play is somehow afoot for a while now . . . well, all I can say is that Rowntree's Miss Dark's Apparitions never fail to deliver, and I can't wait to see what's in store next.

7. Castle of the Winds by Christina Baehr (April 14). Speaking of stories that consistently deliver: I am so looking forward to returning to the cozy Gothic world of the Secrets of Ormdale series. Even better, this story sees Edith venturing off to Wales (in some interesting company, no less! — though I can't say more than that), apparently to encounter a legendary Red Dragon, and I just know this will be quite the adventure. I'm excited to find out what mysteries Edith will uncover next, and I'm also eager to see how certain relationships continue to develop.

8. The Erlking's Daughters by Claire Trella Hill (April 19). Wrapping up our streak of awesomeness-overload: The Erlking's Daughters is by the same author as Black and Deep Desires — aka that historical paranormal romance that I went uncharacteristically feral over last year — but this time she's giving us a dark fae fantasy tale with a slowburn romance and strong sibling bonds. We all know that fae and slowburn romance and sibling bonds are like catnip to me . . . and while I can go either way on dark, I trust Hill to handle it well. (I also have an ARC of this one, so I'll be reading it well before the release date — the only reason I haven't gotten to it yet is because I've had other books-with-deadlines that had to be read first.)

9. Shattered Resistance by Madisyn Carlin (May 28). This is the third book in the series that began with Shattered Reflection, which came out as part of the Arista Challenge Shattered Mirrors release. I liked Reflection, so I'm kind of ashamed to have missed the fact that the sequel is already out! But I'm eager to get my hands on both Shattered Reaction (the sequel) and Shattered Resistance and return to this world and these characters.

What book releases are you excited for this spring? Am I missing any? Please tell me in the comments!
Thanks for reading!

 

Hello, everyone! March and April are full of exciting book releases, and today, I'm helping to celebrate the first of these: Katie Hanna's Water Horse, a Western fantasy coming in just a few days, on March 19. Katie has published many short stories in anthologies and through Havok, but this is her first full-length nove release, so I'm absolutely thrilled for her. I was also thrilled to get my hands on an ARC of her novel so I could read this tale of magic, murder, and marriage as soon as possible — and, of course, so I could share my thoughts with y'all.

Thoughts on Water Horse

1. I love the blend of a Western setting and Irish mythology. You all know that I'm a fan of unique fantasy settings, especially for historical fantasy — while I love the classic medieval-Western-European-inspired stories, it's delightful to see how authors merge magic and fantasy elements with other eras. And since the Old West is already such a legendary era and region on its own, combining it with fantasy seems such like such a natural choice, I'm always surprised that there aren't more fantasy Westerns out there. Happily, Water Horse fills a little bit of that void. I can't speak to the book's historical accuracy, but it hits the right notes of ranchers and cowboys, wild horses, isolated settlements, and adventure. And Hanna blends in Irish mythology, specifically the water horses (similar to kelpies, but sea-dwelling), along with other magic and magical beings in a way that works very well.
   
2. I enjoyed the characters and their dynamics. This book features a very colorful and varied cast of characters, both magical and mundane. I enjoyed the characters themselves, and I also enjoyed the dynamics between them: the wary alliances, the friendships, and, yes, the romance — Meg and George end up in a marriage of convenience turned second-chance romance (for one of them, anyway), and it's very sweet. That said, the friendships — between George and his ranch hands, between Meg and the magical beings with whom she can communicate, and between Meg and Brian (a ranch hand who's also from Ireland) — are also a strong element of the story, and they were all written very well. Plus, there's a magical cat in this story, so that's obviously a plus.
3. There is a lot more swearing than I expected. Is it worse than Critical Role (aka, the very upper limit of what I can tolerate)? No. Is it worse than some other books I've read? Also no. Was it enough to detract from my enjoyment of the book? Yes, yes it was — language used included pretty much everything except the f-bomb, and the s-word showed up with surprising frequency. And, yes, I know, this is a story about cowboys, and realistically speaking, they probably wouldn't exactly be clean-spoken . . . but I think that it should be possible to strike a balance between realism and not making readers uncomfortable in that way. If a book is going to make me uncomfortable, I would prefer it to be because it challenges my view of the world in a good way, not because the characters have overly dirty mouths.
4. On a nitpicky note, there's something about either the writing style or the POV that I don't love. I think this has to do with the fact that Water Horse is written in first-person POV that switches between three characters, and while I love single-lead first-person POV, switching first-person POV has to be done really, really well in order to not bother me. Technically, Water Horse checks the main boxes — the characters have fairly distinct voices, they don't switch mid-chapter, and chapters are labeled with the POV character — but something about it still bothers me, and it kept me from enjoying the book as much as I could. This is very much a personal thing, though, so others might not be bothered at all.
5. This is, in many ways, a story about secrets and second chances. The events of this story are a second chance for many characters, whether that's a second chance at life, at love, or at being better than you used to be. It's also about secrets, how they divide characters and how they threaten the second chances that are on offer. And while I did occasionally get frustrated with how long some of those secrets were kept, the way in which they came out and the results of the reveals played well with the overall theme.

Does Water Horse sound like something you'd enjoy reading? What's a setting you'd like to see more in fantasy? Tell me in the comments!
Thanks for reading!

Hello hello hello! I originally intended to take this week off from blogging, as I had a lot on my plate and wanted to focus my time and energy elsewhere. Then one of the things that was on my plate came off it . . . and I remembered that I had a half-finished post that I'd been saving for March Magics, so here we are! For those who don't know, March Magics is an annual, month-long celebration of the writings of Diana Wynne Jones and Terry Pratchett. I typically don't participate aside from using the event as an excuse to read Howl's Moving Castle, Chrestomanci, or some Discworld, but this year I'm squeezing in a post or two on the blogs and socials as well! As some of you might remember, I finally finished reading the Discworld series last year, after having procrastinated on Night Watch for an embarrassing amount of time. And now that I've read the whole series, I decided that it's a great time to share my favorite Discworld books — a list that, for the most part, also functions as a set of excellent entry points into the series for those curious.

The Best Books of Discworld

1. Going Postal. The chances of this book not taking first place were exactly nil. It has all the things I love about Discworld — the clever use of tropes and archetypes, the masterfully crafted plot, the brilliant characters, the humor — packaged with some of my favorite character and storyline types. Moist von Lipwig is a character in much the same line as The Music Man's Professor Harold Hill, and when what should've been a death sentence lands him instead in a government job, well . . . magnificently masterminded chaos ensues. Plus, even though it's fairly late in the series, it's a good entry point for the Discworld novels — it gives you the background you need on Ankh-Morpork and its significant inhabitants, and I'd argue it has some of Pratchett's best writing.
   
   
   
2. Guards! Guards! I may love Moist von Lipwig . . . but he's only my second favorite Discworld character (tied with the Patrician). My favorite? Sam Vimes. Vimes is a character of contrasts, a transplant from another genre who works astonishingly well in the fantasy city of Ankh-Morpork. And while Guards! Guards! shows him at his lowest . . . it also shows how he went from that lowest point onto the path that we see him on for the rest of the series. As a bonus, it's also a very good starting point for the series — early enough that you don't really need any background knowledge, but far enough in that Pratchett really had a feel for what he was about. (It's also where I started the series, so you know. There's that.)
   
   
   
3. The Wee Free Men. The Tiffany Aching sub-series in general is pretty good, but the first book — featuring a very practical, no-nonsense young Tiffany and her first encounters with the wild and riotous Nac Mac Feegle — is definitely my favorite. It's got Pratchett's take on fairies and fairyland, a main character who sets out to defend her family and her home, and just a lot of excellent moments and insight. It's also very short, so if you're after a quick read, this is it.
   
   
   
4. Hogfather. This is probably my most-read Discworld book, even if it doesn't take the top spot, as it's often one of my yearly Christmas reads. When the Disc's version of Santa Claus goes missing, Death must temporarily take his place while Death's granddaughter Susan (who is somewhat along the lines of a goth Mary Poppins) figures out what's gone wrong. Also featured are the wizards of Unseen University (whose extensive and mostly food-oriented holiday celebrations are interrupted by the goings-on), send-ups of a vast variety of Christmas tales, and what happens when you have a great deal of belief and nowhere for it to go. While it's a very secular take on Christmas, it does have worthwhile themes — and it's just generally a fun read.
   
   
   
5. The Fifth Elephant. This is the one book on this list that I wouldn't necessarily recommend as a starting point, simply because it's both late in the Discworld series as a whole and midway through the City Watch subseries. So, while it can be read first without issue, you'll enjoy it more if you have a little context for, well, most of the characters. That said, I do love this book. There's lore, intrigue, a genuinely clever mystery, and Sam Vimes being, well, Sam Vimes. The one thing that sours the story is that there are some LGBT themes running through parts of the story, but there's also some great themes about power and tradition and culture and lines that you shouldn't cross, so I feel it balances out.

Have you read any Discworld books? If so, what are your favorites? And will you be doing anything to participate in March Magics? Please tell me in the comments!
Thanks for reading!

February Doings!

Hello, all. February is over, and March is over, which means it's time for another Doings! post. This has been a long and tiring month — exactly what I expect February to be most years, actually, but not what it usually actually is. The past several years, I've gone into February with dread and found it wasn't half as bad as I feared. This year, I went into the month with an impressive level of optimism, and now I am tired.

Writing!

• This was . . . well, it was a frustrating month, writing-wise. Technically, it was very productive, as I added about 30K more words to Daughters of Atirse #2, which is the same number of actually-drafting words I wrote in January. Unfortunately, I was hoping for about 10K more than I actually achieved, thus my frustration.
• Why the (comparatively) lower wordcount? There are two factors in play in the answer to that question. For one thing, in January, I spent multiple Saturday mornings doing writing sprints with the RealmSphere group, while in February, I had to set up my own sprints if I wanted them . . . and, of course, I had relatively few free Saturdays to spend sprinting. For another thing, I had a lot more days when I came home really tired from work, had a hard time starting my evening writing session (or focusing once I'd started), and ended up saying "I wrote something, and that'll be good enough; I'm going to bed."
• The fact that I was also navigating a section of the book where I had fewer clear ideas of what happens when also didn't help. I had several key scenes figured out, but I didn't have a good idea of exactly what connected them, and navigating that is always tricky. I am almost to the point where that problem should start to clear up, thankfully.
• As for other writing projects: I made a little progress on my D&D adventure (not as much as I should've, but still better than nothing, given that it was not at any point this month my first, second, or third priority), and I did not work on my DOSA Files story. Originally I was going to wait to write it until I finished Onora's story, but at this point, I'm halfway wondering if taking a week or weekend mostly off from Onora to focus on that might help more than it would hurt.

Reading!

• My reading was another pretty mixed bag, though I did get to some books I'd been meaning to read for a long time, and almost everything I read was new to me.
• The month started out strong with Nevermoor: The Trials of Morrigan Crow, which I meant to read back at Christmas and didn't get to — it's not a Christmas book, but it has some significant Christmas-related scenes. I'm not sure why it has Christmas when it's not set on Earth, but . . . it's a middle grade novel, and it's fun and whimsical without lacking heart. And while it does flirt with a trope that has made me put books down in the past (magical secret world that looks down on the mundane world outside), it gets a pass by being very clear about the fact that the secret world has its problems too and also by being a little more justified in its secrecy and closed-off-ness than some other secret worlds I can think of but won't name here. It's not a perfect book, and I guessed several of the twists, but it was a fun read.
• The fun thing about February is that it's Blind Date with a Book month. I only had two blind dates this year: Dragonsong, which I've meant to read for a while, and The Tiger's Wife, which I'd never heard of before now. Dragonsong was a good book with an interesting world and, of course, dragons, but I had a really hard time getting through the first half because I kept wanting to give side characters a good shaking. It picked up in the second half, though, which happened to be the half that involved more dragons. As for The Tiger's Wife, it was magical realism set in the Balkans, about a young doctor and her memories of and relationship with her grandfather and her grandfather's memory of his past. I had mixed feelings about it — it's well-written, and it uses a little-known fairy tale in a very interesting way, but it's also vaguely depressing in the way many literary fiction books seem to be, and so I don't think I'm likely to reread it.
• My other three new-to-me reads all fell in the category of "didn't love it, didn't hate it." I'd heard good things about the Detective Conan manga series, but the first book didn't wow me — the mysteries are good, and the concept is interesting, but there's a major side character who makes me mad. I plan to try to continue the series in order to give it a fair trial, but yeah. Stephanie Pearl-McPhee Casts Off is a creative nonfiction thing about the cultures and practices that surround knitting, and it was ok, but I like her more memoir/autobiographical books better. Lawless is a book with a cool concept — Western-dystopian-ish sci-fi retellings of the book of Judges — but it's also an anthology, and as is typical of anthology, I really enjoyed some stories ("The Mark," a retelling of Gideon, was probably my favorite), really disliked others, and had no strong feelings one way or another about the rest. Also . . . it's Judges. "Every man did what was right in his own eyes" and all that. I appreciate some well-applied grittiness, but sometimes it went a little further than what I, personally, was comfortable with.
• We finish up with the rereads. Rumplestiltskin's Bargain is another of Kendra E. Ardnek's Twisted Time series, and it's a pretty cool take on the story of Rumplestiltskin. And DragonKnight was, of course, excellent. It's my favorite in the DragonKeeper Chronicles, and returning to the story is always a joy. And I got to read it alongside someone who was discovering it for the first time, so that was also a lot of fun. Definitely a good way to finish up the month.

 Watching & Playing!

• I watched exactly one thing this month that wasn't a short-form YouTube video, and that was The Princess Bride right before Valentine's Day. As always, it was a delight. I think I shocked the rest of my family by saying that not only was I definitely interested in watching something on my surprise-free-evening, but I also had a very specific movie I wanted to watch! But I had seen a lot of Princess Bride-related posts in the previous weeks, and I hadn't watched it in a while, so it seemed like a good time. And, again, it was.
• Also, because I want to keep this section interesting, I'm expanding it to include other types of non-book media I enjoyed during the month, specifically podcasts and video games. I made this decision in large part because I've been listening to the Wolf 359 podcast, and it is so good. I technically started it back in January, but I really got hooked this month. It's a sci-fi story about a small crew on a deep space mission orbiting a star far from earth, and the storyline slowly expands from sitcom-style shenanigans to intrigue, betrayal, and mystery. I'm about halfway through Season 2, and again, it is so good. If you are a fan of either Star Trek or Schlock Mercenary (or, you know, sci-fi in general), check it out! Also! It's only about sixty episodes long, so it won't take that long to get through, especially if you (unlike me) listen to podcasts more than just on one half of your commute.
• I've also been doing some gaming, sometimes as a reward for actually finishing my to-do list early and sometimes as a way to give my brain a break between tasks. Mostly I've been playing through The Stanley Parable: Ultra-Deluxe, which is a re-release that came out a few years ago and has quite a bit of new content. I know this game isn't for everyone, and it does get a bit nihilistic or absurdist at times . . . but it's fun, and a lot of it is about storytelling — the types of stories we tell, the ways in which we tell them, and also what it's like when your characters (or your players, if you're a D&D DM, which is a form of storytelling as well) repeatedly defy you. So, obviously, I appreciate that element.
• And, in usual Sarah fashion, I'm finally playing the Portal 2 co-op levels with my sister. We did one gaming session together this past weekend in which we completed the first two sets of levels, and we had a grand time solving the puzzles together, being silly with the gesture function, and snarking back at GLaDOS when she makes sarcastic comments at us. I introduced my sister to Portal a couple years ago via playing simultaneously with her one summer, and I'm really glad I get to play with her again. (It's anyone's guess when we'll play next, but . . . y'know. Hopefully it won't be too long.)
• (Also, in case anyone, including my future self, was about to say or think something to the effect of "You know, the fact that you've been gaming might also have something to do with your lower wordcount this month," I just want to clarify: I had five gaming days across the entire month of February, one of them was also my highest wordcount day of the month, and all but one of them were on days I wrote at least a thousand words. The games are not the problem here. My brain, my schedule, my energy levels, my characters, and my outline are.)

Life!

• This has been a busy month, but not in a way that produces a lot of stuff worth talking about.
• Grad school stuff is still going well, though it's definitely picking up with some larger and more effort-intensive assignments. I'm still enjoying the class reasonably well, but I'm also ready for it to be done. The biggest assignment of the class is due this weekend, and I'm very thankful that I've been able to use some stuff I've already done for work to put it together so it's not taking quite as much time.
• On the topic of work: I expected this month to be dominated by the start of Lent, and that has taken up a lot of my time and attention . . . but much more of my energy has been taken up by funerals and tech troubles. We had internet-connectivity issues with our livestream towards the start of the month that were super annoying and time-consuming to sort out and that required me to stay late a few times and come in early one day. I did get comp time, so I'm not complaining, but it wasn't fun for me or anyone else involved. We've also had funerals pretty much every weekend, which has been . . . a lot. Funerals aren't hard, exactly, on my end, but they are energy-intensive due to the fact that there's so many moving parts and so many things that get decided at the last minute. And, of course, you're working with the family, who's grieving, and you're trying to find the balance of "be gentle and patient because they're going through a hard time" and actually, you know, getting all the necessary info so the program can be printed on time. It's a great ministry and a wonderful opportunity to show love to people when they need it most, but, again, it's energy intensive at the best of times, and February is not the best of times.
• Ok, this has been very depressing; let's find something more cheerful to report.
• Valentine's Day happened! I didn't do anything much for it, but my mom made cheesecake with strawberry topping, and it was delicious.
• Also, two days after Valentine's Day, I got to have brunch and writing time at a French-Asian inspired cafe near my house, and that was both tasty and fun. I don't go often because it's expensive, but that particular morning I had some other stuff going on that meant I could justify the trip. I got milk tea, a croquette, and some little mochi cheese pancake-things with a cream cheese filling, none of which I'd tried before, and all of which were tasty. This particular cafe does a lot of filled breads and scones and such, and I kind of love it.
• In yet more food-related news, my Baking Yesteryear recipe for the month was chocolate potato cake. This is one of the first really good recipes I remember seeing in Hollis's videos, so obviously it was pretty high priority. The cake is more like a spice cake than a birthday cake in terms of texture and flavor, but it is very tasty! You would not guess that there's potato in there. I know this for a fact, as, when I took it to Bible study and asked people what they thought the secret ingredient was, absolutely no one suggested half a potato. I don't think I'd make this cake often, as I don't like washing the potato-masher and it's more of a chocolate chip cake than a chocolate cake, but I would make it again.
• Moving on to something non-food-related: I finally finished the shawl I've been working on! I expected to use two full skeins, but ended up stopping earlier than that because I decided the shawl was long enough (and also using up the second skein would've taken me until June, probably, at the rate I was going). I'm still waiting for an opportunity to wear the shawl, but I probably won't get that for a couple weeks yet, possibly another month.
• We'll wrap up with the latest in D&D news. In our long-running campaign, we had several sessions' worth of diplomacy and intrigue, which . . . went a lot better than it could've, though not quite as successfully as we hoped. Long story short, we're less popular in-world than we used to be, at least in my character's home country, but we exchanged our popularity for peace by proposing and arranging a treaty that ended a war and freed a people group that was being abused and oppressed, so . . . worth it. And, I mean, we might be less popular, but we're also not considered criminals anymore, so that's also a win. (Again, long story short: absolute ages ago, we went to warn someone about a fiend we were tracking, the guy we were warning was in league with the fiend and tried to kill us, and then we were blamed when he died. And, yes, that was because one of our party members killed him, but it was self-defense, not murder.)
• I also had my first session of a new campaign with an online friend, her daughter, and some of her friends/family, and I think that went well. It's a 4e campaign instead of a 5e campaign, and the DM's style is kind of different from that of the DM of the other campaign I'm in, so those things will take some getting used to. I had fun, though, and I like my character (a half-elf rogue named Mythe), and I'm excited to learn more about the other player characters, so it should be good. I'm looking forward to seeing where it goes.

March Plans

• I have one more week in my current grad school class! Again, I'm ready to be done with it. At least the last week is fairly light in terms of workload. Then I have about a week's break before the next class starts. I admit that I'm not looking forward to the next class — it's on editing, layout, and publishing, which is very much in my wheelhouse, but it's also basically one big group project. Besides that, looking at the syllabus, I'm pretty sure that between my day job and the fact that I've self-published seven books, I'm already past a lot of what they're going to cover. I don't say that thinking I know everything there is to know about editing, layout, or publishing — I know there's more I can learn — but, again, it looks pretty basic, especially for a graduate-level class, and I suspect the main thing I'll get out of this class is finding out exactly how much I dislike using Google Docs for formatting.
• Speaking of writing and publishing: I'm once again aiming for adding 40k to Daughters of Atirse #2 in March. I don't think I'll finish the book this month, even though that was my original goal, but I think I can get close. I also hope to draft my DOSA Files submission, probably during the break between grad school classes.
• That said, I'm also going to try to make a point of not jumping straight into trying to write on evenings when I'm really tired, as lately that just seems to result in me having trouble focusing and getting far more easily distracted than I usually am. But I'm also not going to fall into the trap of saying "Oh, I'll just watch one or two YouTube shorts and then I'll get started." Instead, if I'm tired enough that I can tell it'll be a problem, I plan to give myself between fifteen and thirty minutes (depending on just now tired I am) to do something that will actually recharge my brain — long enough to read a bit, watch something a little more substantial than shorts, play a level or two of a game, or do another activity of that nature. I hope this'll help — though I also hope that it won't be necessary and that escaping February will also free me from enough of my tiredness that I'll be able to write more easily.
• As for work: it's the month of Easter. I will continue to be busy, and I will probably only get busier as the month goes on — but at least we don't have any funerals scheduled for this month! And I already have some good designs for a few of the graphics I'll need, so I have that going for me.
• I didn't get to any ARCs in February, so I'll need to prioritize those in March. I'm also planning to reread at least some of the Prydain Chronicles (technically, I already started on that, but I haven't finished any yet) and hopefully read the Emily Wilde books that I keep hearing are so good. I also have beta reading to do! I may try to get a good bit of that done this weekend, actually.
• I also need to find a good next project for crafting. I have a good idea of something I want to do, but I can't find a free pattern for it, and I'm currently debating whether I like the idea enough to spend money on it. Whatever I do, it's going to be something short and satisfying to balance out all the time I spent on my shawl!
• I'm also trying to figure out some stuff with my blogs and my online presence in general, and I probably should work on that in March . . . but it's anyone's guess if I'll actually have the time or energy for it. We'll see.

How was your February? Any plans for March? What's your strategy for writing while tired? What's something good you've read recently? Please tell me in the comments!
Thanks for reading!