Hello, everyone! We are officially in the Christmas season, and 2024 is nearly gone. November and December are always my busy months, and this year looks like it'll be no exception — this past month certainly wasn't. So without further ado, let's dive into November's Doings!

Writing!

I've mostly been working on more prep for Project Kingfisher this month: developing characters, building the world, and writing backstory snippets to explore character dynamics. This is a different approach than I normally take, but it seems to be working for me, and I hope that it'll have good results. I am definitely enjoying the fact that I gave myself permission to write snippets even if they aren't "necessary" for the story. That's been a lot of fun, and the short pieces are a nice change of pace from novels.
I have also done a little work on my D&D campaign — not enough to finish this storyline, but enough to keep ahead of the sessions. My group seems to be having fun, though we didn't get to play much this month because of various people having busy schedules.
That about covers it in this category. Writing has been a bit on the backburner this month, both because I'm in the planning stage on a story and because my time and energy is going elsewhere.

Reading!

This month was a blend of ARCs and miscellaneous rereads. The highlights of the month were, without a doubt, Valley of Dragons (the final Secrets of Ormdale novel) and A Stab in the Dark (which is not the final Miss Dark's Apparitions novel!). I already reviewed Valley of Dragons, but to recap, I thought this was a splendid ending to the story, and I loved how Baehr brought the story full circle and wrapped up the various character arcs and plot threads. As for A Stab in the Dark, it's full of all the things I loved about the rest of the series, with the added bonus of being a Phantom of the Opera story full of secret passages and murders and ghosts, which is absolutely delightful. I was not as big a fan of the other ARC I read, The Death of Clara Willenheim, as it got really dark in the second half, but I think it just also . . . wasn't my genre.
Other than that, the main notable reread was H.S.J. Williams's Fairest Son, a genderbent fae Snow White retelling. I honestly liked this one better on the reread than I did the first time around, though I can't put my finger on why. Maybe it's because of different expectations? Who knows.
I wrapped up the month and started December by reading Time Echoes, Interfinity, and Fatal Convergence (currently reading, will probably finish this weekend), which simultaneously are and are not rereads because they're rewritten versions of the Echoes from the Edge series. The new versions are in a different perspective and have some tweaks to prose and description, but the narrative is the same. I think I like them roughly as much as the original; the POV change makes sense, and I still enjoy the story. I don't love them quite as much as I did originally because some aspects now seem very heavy-handed, but they're good all the same.

Watching & Playing!

My friends and I have made it all the way to Episode 14 of Yona of the Dawn, and I continue to enjoy the show more and more! So far, I have met two of the four dragons, and I am calling it now that the blue dragon will be my favorite of them all. (He falls into the category of "characters who have experienced so much pain and choose to be kind anyway," and I love him.) I also really love Yun, partially because he's fun and partially because he and I are so often on the same page. And, of course, Hak and Yona continue to be excellent characters . . . really, all the character arcs in this show are excellent so far, and I have every confidence that they'll just get better.
My family also launched into the start of the Christmas season with, of course, Christmas movies! Specifically: The Lemon Drop Kid and White Christmas, as those are the movies that are on both my and my sister's high priority lists. I don't have much to say about them other than the fact that I continue to really enjoy them.
Aside from that, I continue to enjoy both Star Rail and Genshin. The next Star Rail update dropped this week, and I have therefore spent the last month or so internally screaming for two reasons: for one, we're getting an epilogue to the Penacony storyline; for another, Jing Yuan (aka, the character for whom I started playing the game) is rerunning, and I was not prepared for either of those things. That said, I still got some incredibly lucky pulls (which produced more screaming, but in a delighted way). As for the new story? I'm about halfway through it, maybe a little more, and I'm quite enjoying it. This story brings back two past characters who are both embarking on a new life of sorts, and I like how their arcs have been handled so far. One, a former antagonist, is making a last visit to his homeland to say goodbye and try to make amends, and he is very convincingly (and realistically) regretful. The other was on the verge of death and now has to figure out how to live when she's lost so much of her old life, as well as dealing with the pain and wounds (physical and mental) caused by all she went through. It's really good, and I'm excited to discover the rest of the story.
Also in Star Rail, I've finally started really exploring different endgame mode challenges, and I've discovered that they're a lot more fun after you understand stuff about team compositions and character builds and when you have a decent number of characters as options. It's very satisfying each time I manage to beat another difficulty level!
That aside, until this past week, I have actually been playing more Genshin than Star Rail. I wrapped up the Liyue quest (I know what Zhongli's deal is now!) and did some interlude storylines that revealed lots of lore . . . albeit in a way that raised as many questions as it answered. My approach to Genshin lore tends to be a lot like my approach to Cosmere lore: I like discovering it, but I'm not delving into all the theories and digging for tiny details in every corner (though I'll happy listen if someone else wants to share, and sometimes I'll grab onto some aspect or detail that I think is really cool and get a little more into that). I'm just along for the ride, really, but that doesn't mean I'm not enjoying myself.

Life!

While November was, as I said, very busy, most of the busy things weren't exceptionally exciting. Work was full of wrapping up Stewardship, putting together the Advent newsletter, and preparing for Advent itself — which remains my favorite graphics season, but also has the challenge of "how do you put a new spin on this thing for the fourth year in a row." And now we're in Advent, and I'm about to have a very full two weeks as I prepare everything for Christmas before I take some well-earned time off At least I got enough prep done that I'm not too stressed, and holiday services tend to be very similar year-to-year, so I know what to expect. I'm also very pleased with the new church promo piece I put together to distribute at Christmas Eve, which I think turned out wonderfully!
Grad school is also keeping me plenty busy, though I'm almost done with the current class. Advanced English Grammar continues to be way more technical than what I expected, and it's also a lot of writing down rules to explain things most people know instinctively, which . . . is not my favorite type of subject. It's also clearly aimed more at people planning to teach English than at general-purpose writers. Still, like I said, it's almost over (I submit my final project this weekend and do my final exam next week), and it could have been much worse.
On a happier note, November brings with it both my birthday and Thanksgiving! We celebrated my birthday with lunch out at my favorite Mexican restaurant and dessert at Bible study; my mom made cheddar apple pie (tasty) and praline pecan pumpkin pie (DELICIOUS). The latter was something I'd wanted to try for a while, and I definitely hope we make it again. It has the best aspects of both pecan pie and pumpkin pie in one dish; what's not to like?
At Thanksgiving, my sister got to come home for the weekend, which we were all very happy about. On Thanksgiving day, we set up (but didn't decorate) our Christmas tree and, as usual, celebrated with our Bible study group. Then on Black Friday, we decorated the tree — we used to do all the Christmas tree stuff on Friday, but last year we decided that spreading it out worked better and didn't really violate the no-Christmas-before-Thanksgiving rule.
On the baking front, both November and December began with cake. November opened with an election cake from Baking Yesteryear, which is a kind of bready, fruity cake made in a Bundt pan. It's named as such because people in New England used to serve it on election days, back when those were practically holidays. It was tasty, though I don't plan on making it again. Then in December, I made a chocolate cake with ganache for a coworker's birthday; I had a little trouble getting the ganache to thicken properly, but it tasted delicious.
In D&D, we wrapped up our mini-campaign that we were playing between sessions. Though it was a short campaign, it was a lot of fun; the DM did a really good job with making the NPCs interesting and complex, and he included a lot of interesting environmental aspects in the combats. For example, one fight was in a hall that had been lit on fire, so we had to deal with the fire and smoke as well as the enemy, and the final fight was in a room that was very tall and vertical, and we had to work our way up to the enemy. It was all really cool (albeit stressful in the moment), and I hope to be able to use some of those concepts in my own DMing in future.
As for crafting, I'm still working on Christmas presents, and I have made very little progress on my new cape. I have discovered that, until you get down into the 30s and below (and maybe even to some degree in the upper 30s), capes are far superior to coats in some ways — notably, they're more comfortable, less confining, and generally more fun. At the moment, I have two capes that are both about hip-length and aren't cosplay specific, and I've been wearing those a lot. I have to say that doing so makes colder weather much less unpleasant!

December Plans

Obviously, most of my December plans revolve around Christmas in some fashion, whether that's making Christmas gifts, baking cookies, or celebrating with various people in various ways. One notable thing that's happening this year is that I'm in charge of revamping our Bible study's Christmas play into a dramatic reading (because we're severely lacking in kids to do the play), and that's been an interesting endeavor. I'm also hoping to try a few new cookie recipes, including some from Baking Yesteryear, which should be fun.
On the grad school front, I have one week left in the current class, and I am so ready to be done. I'm turning in my final project this weekend, and then I just have a few more chapters of reading, a last discussion, and the final exam before I can call this class finished. And while I do need to figure out what I'm doing next, I will take a great deal of pleasure in having a few weeks off.
I really need to sort out an idea for the DOSA Files anthology; I'm down to three weeks to write, edit, and submit it if I'm going to make it happen. The problem is that work and grad school have taken most of my energy up to this point, and other creative projects are a lot easier to work on. Still, I hope that I'll be able to sit down and put something together once my current class is done. I also plan to continue Project Kingfisher prep with the goal of starting the actual draft either at the end of December or the beginning of January.
I am taking a good chunk of time off around the holidays, and I'm looking forward to that, both as an opportunity to get some work done on creative projects and as a chance to rest and spend time with family and friends. Of course, it will almost certainly go by way too fast.
I'll wrap this up with a fun, non-holiday thing I'm looking forward to in December: the start of a new campaign with my D&D group! It's going to be weird to play a whole new character and a very different class — I'm going full spellcaster this time — but I can't wait to find out what our DM has planned for us and see where our characters' stories lead.

How was your November? Any plans for December? Are you ready for Christmas? Please tell me in the comments!
Thanks for reading!